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THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN OF 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 

I 
I 



THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 
OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 



BY 

GEORGE MATHESON 
D.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E, 




HODDER & STOUGHTON 

NEW YORK 

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



C»<^VO?l 



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Copyright, 1905 
By A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON 



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Printed in United States of America 



PREFACE 

I HAVE lately published two volumes dealing 
with the representative men of the Old Testa- 
ment — the men who therein represent sections 
of universal humanity. They embraced a series 
of studies neither historical nor critical, but 
mental. I imagined myself standing in a gal- 
lery looking at a collection of portraits, and 
setting myself to analyse these as they are de- 
lineated. The aim was to take them just as 
they are presented to us, and, without inquiring 
whence or how they come, to find the special 
thought which each reveals. The kindly recep- 
tion of the effort has emboldened me to issue a 
similar volume of New Testament representa- 
tives. Strictly speaking, the new gallery is 
not a continuation of the old. The old exhib- 
its phases of character; the new, revolutions 
of character. Nevertheless, in the latter as 
much as in the former, we expect to find that 



vi PREFACE 

each portrait embodies a distinct thought; and 
it is this thought which we seek for. The 
studies are again mental — not critical nor 
historical. We take the figures as they stand 
before us. We simply put one question: As- 
suming the authenticity of the narratives and 
letters, what is the message which each life 
brings.? About the historical character of the 
portraits, I have myself no doubt ; but it will be 
admitted by all schools that, if revelation there 
be, it must ultimately lie in the thought. I 
have only to add that, as in the previous vol- 
umes, I have given the book a semi-devotional 
aspect by closing each chapter with a short 
invocation or prayer. 

G. M. 
Edinburgh, 1905. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Introduction, i 

II. John the Expanded, 24 

III. John the Self-Surrendered, . . .45 

IV. Nathanael the Invigorated, . . . 67 
V. Peter the Emboldened, . . . ,88 

VI. NicoDEMus the Instructed, . . .109 

VII. Thomas the Convinced, . . . .131 

VIII. Philip the Disillusioned, . . . 153 

IX. Matthew the Exalted, . . . .175 

X. Zaccheus the Conscious-Struck, . .196 

XI. James the Softened, . . . . . 217 

XII. Barnabas the Chastened, . . .239 

XIII. Mark the Steadied, 262 

XIV. Cornelius the Transplanted, . . 285 
XV. Timothy the Disciplined, . . .307 

XVI. Paul the Illuminated, .... 329 



Vll 



CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTION 

There are moments in the history of this world 
which may be called moments of ingathering. 
Their mission is to collect the experiences of 
the past and bind them into unity. The most 
striking of all such moments is the advent of 
Christ. To the men who witnessed that advent 
it presented an appearance which they have de- 
scribed by one word, 'fulness.* In the heart of 
the Roman Empire there stood forth a man 
who resembled in His nature nothing so much 
as that empire itself. Rome was not a country 
of the earth ; she was a country that had become 
the earth. She had gathered into her bosom 
the once separate lands and bound them by 
a silver chain; she represented to the view 
of the spectator not a nation, but the human 
race. So was it with the man Christ Jesus. 



2 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

He was a mirror of that empire into which He 
was bom. If Rome united in her constitution 
all dominions and powers, Jesus united in His 
person all types of character. The rivers of 
every land had run into this human sea. The 
earnestness of Judah was there; the buoyancy 
of Greece was there; the mysticism of India 
was there ; the practicalness of China was there ; 
the legal acumen of Rome herself was there. 
There dwelt the self-restraint of the Stoic, the 
easy mind of the Epicurean, the winged imagina- 
tion of the Platonist. There repose side by side 
things which naturally fly apart — the simplicity 
of Galilee and the subtlety of Jerusalem, the 
gravity of the East and the sparkle of the West, 
the devotion of the Brahman to the soul, and 
that care for the wants of the body which con- 
stitutes the essence of the European life. 

If you wish to see the fulness of the life of 
Christ just put to yourself one question. Re- 
tracing the steps through that Gallery of the Old 
Testament which we have traversed, and taking 
at random any great quality expressed by any 
figure, simply ask yourself, Is not this equally 



INTRODUCTION 5 

represented in the life of Jesus? Has Enoch a 
vision of immortality ; Christ professes to reveal 
life eternal. Is Noah a preacher of righteousness ; 
Christ calls sinners to repentance. Has Abra- 
ham a dream of universal empire; Christ claims 
to found a kingdom of God. Does Isaac rep- 
resent home-life; so does Christ at Bethany. 
Does Jacob aspire to a priesthood ; Christ offers 
Himself for a world's sin. Is Moses the law- 
giver on Sinai; Christ is the law-giver on Her- 
mon. Is David chivalrous to his foes; Christ 
forgives His enemies. I do not know a phase of 
Old Testament heroism which has not been re- 
produced in the Picture of Jesus. The calm wis- 
dom of Solomon is here, side by side with the 
flashing of Elijah's fire. The fine courtesy of 
Boaz is here, hand in hand with Elisha's denuncia- 
tion of wrong. The daring fearlessness of Daniel 
is here, blended in equal measure with Job's pa- 
tient endurance. The humanitarian sweep of 
Isaiah is here, but along with it there is some- 
thing which such universal sympathy is apt to 
exclude — the capacity for individual friendship 
which marks the soul of Jonathan. 



4 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

It seems to me that such a mode of experi- 
menting on the Sacred Gallery would be a real 
test of *the fulness of Him that filleth all in 
all.' One who was almost a contemporary of 
the Galilean ministry speaks of Christ as des- 
tined in the future to gather all things to Him- 
self. But, from an artistic point of view, this 
gathering was already completed. The Por- 
trait of Jesus is not the representative of a 
phase of humanity; it is humanity itself. He 
unites in one face and form the faces and forms 
of the whole past Gallery. He represents no 
special quality; He expresses all qualities and 
He expresses all specially — in a pronounced 
degree. It is written, *When the fulness 
of the time was come God sent His Son.' 
The fulness of the time was the time for ful- 
ness. It was the age when the rivers were to 
be ripe for being gathered into the sea, when 
the planets were to be ready for incorporation 
in the solar beam. The human side of Chris- 
tianity was to be not the revelation of a man, 
but the revelation of Man. I read in the Book of 
Genesis that * in the beginning God created the 



INTRODUCTION 5 

heavens and the earth ' — that the first thing on 
which He gazed was not a part but the whole. 
So has it been with the genesis of Christianity. 
The first thing which appeared to the eye of 
the spectator was its entire heaven and its en- 
tire earth. Future years would exhibit the 
separate items — sun, moon, and star — herb, 
plant, and tree. But the morning of Chris- 
tianity was the union of all things. All gifts 
and graces were embraced in a single life — the 
man Christ Jesus. The colours of that life, 
which one day were to be distributed among 
different flowers, were beheld at first concen- 
trated in a rainbow. The garment which to- 
morrow was to be parted among many bore 
to-day the aspect of a single robe whose rich- 
ness enwrapped one human spirit, and whose 
folds were covering one individual form. 

In the primitive stage of village life we 
commonly find all commodities embraced in a 
single store. People go there for the most 
unlike things — daily food, medicine, millinery, 
house - letting, carriage - driving, registration, 
banking, the offices of the smith and the car- 



6 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

penter — perhaps even of the lawyer and the 
preacher. The time will come when each of 
these will form its separate craft. But in the 
primitive village they are apt to be vested in a 
single life — a life of which we might say, in 
adaptation of the words of Scripture, *of its 
fulness have we all received.' Now, this is 
precisely the case of primitive Christianity. 
All its varied glories which one day are to be 
disseminated are heaped up in a single soul. 
Like the nebular fire-cloud, it holds the fulness 
of all things. There sleeps the summary of the 
past; there lies the germ of the future. Ex- 
periences the most diverse are there. The un- 
canonical Melchisedek and the priestly Aaron, 
the strong Ishmael and the tender Abel, the 
optimistic Joseph and the sad Jeremiah, the 
child Samuel and the manly Joshua, the expec- 
tant Caleb and the retrospective Hezekiah, the 
dependent Mephibosheth and the all-conquering 
Gideon — they each rest there. It would seem as 
if the river of Paradise had for a moment gath- 
ered back into her bosom those streams from 
which she had parted, and revealed within the 



INTRODUCTION 7 

compass of one garden the manifold grace of 
God. Christianity began where all life begins — 
in a single cell — enfolding within the walls of 
a seemingly insignificant dwelling the nucleus 
of a new heaven and a new earth. 

And now I come to a crucial question. I hear 
the reader say : ' If this Portrait of Jesus has 
gathered up the past, and if the future is to be 
simply a repetition of its glories, why do you 
speak of new representative men ! Nay, on such 
a principle, why should you even speak of a New 
Testament! What is new about it! You have 
shown in the Old Gallery every conceivable 
quality depicted that can belong to a human 
soul. You show at the opening of the Chris- 
tian dispensation these qualities united in a single 
life. You tell us that in the coming section of 
the Gallery the qualities thus united are again 
to be distributed in separate individual por- 
traits. In such a process where is there any room 
for novelty ! Is it not simply a repetition of old 
qualities ! Do we not get out of the box exactly 
what we put in! Has the Old Testament 
Gallery left any phase of mind without a rec- 



8 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

ord ! How shall we distinguish between the fire 
of an Elijah and the fire of a Peter! How 
shall we discriminate between the unselfishness 
of an Abraham and the unselfishness of a Paul ! 
How shall we draw the line between the friend- 
ship of a Jonathan and the friendship of a John ! ' 
These are crucial questions, and they are perti- 
nent questions. They await every man who 
attempts to deal with the representative men of 
the Bible. If Christ is at once the flower of the 
past and the bud of the future, then the qual- 
ities of the future must be simply the qualities 
of the past. And if it be so, is not our prog- 
ress merely a circle, our development only a 
dream! It seems a misnomer to speak of *the 
new man ' — to say that if a man is in Christ he 
is * a new creature. ' Where is the novelty if I 
have simply climbed the wall to see the fields 
of childhood ! Would it not be more correct to 
reverse the words of Paul and say, *To be in 
Christ is to retrace our yesterday; new things 
have passed away and all things have become 
old' ! 
But let us look deeper and this impression it- 



INTRODUCTION 9 

self will pass away. What is the account which 
the New Testament Gallery gives of its own de- 
velopment? — by that it ought to be judged, by 
that it should stand or fall. Now, it so hap- 
pens that a spectator of this gallery has given us 
a very clear view of what in his opinion its fig- 
ures were meant to represent. He says, ' It was 
worthy of Him of whom are all things and to 
whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto 
glory, to make the captain of their salvation per- 
fect through sufferings.' Here, by the glance 
of one piercing eye, is the nature of the New 
Gallery revealed! It is not a new assemblage 
of qualities ; it is a new mode of acquiring them. 
In the old dispensation these qualities were the 
gifts of Nature. Men were born with them; 
they were the native soil of the heart. They 
came to each soul as naturally as air comes, as 
food comes, as pastime comes. But in the new 
dispensation — in the section of the Gallery 
which was about to open, there was to be a 
change of ground. The qualities which had been 
native to the soul were to become the fruit 
of struggle. Men were no longer to be born 



lo THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

with them; they were to win them — to attain 
them through conflict, to reach them by suffer- 
ing. The difference between the Old Gallery 
and the New is the difference between tempera- 
ment and grace; temperament is a planting, 
grace is a supplanting. Joseph is an optimist 
and Peter is an optimist; but the optimism of 
Joseph is very different from the optimism of 
Peter. Joseph was hopeful from disposition — 
he found the flowers in his cradle and he trea- 
sured them in his heart; Peter was hopeful as 
the result of experience — he began life amid the 
briars and he transformed them into flowers. 
This is a typical instance. It expresses in a 
single sentence my whole view of the difference 
between the New Gallery and the Old. In com- 
ing to Christ we are coming to the winepress. 
We are approaching a transforming process. 
We are entering upon a stage in which char- 
acter is to be built, not bom. We are coming to 
a period in which the wild flower is to give place 
to the flower of cultivation, and where a king- 
dom which belonged to hereditary transmission 
is to be won by the power of the sword. 



INTRODUCTION ii 

Here, then, is the nature of the New Evangel 
— perfection through suffering — the attainment 
of a quality as the result of struggle. It would 
not in the least minimise the difference between 
the two Galleries if you could prove that the gen- 
tleness of Ruth was as perfect as the gentleness 
of John. The gentleness of Ruth originates in 
a different source from the gentleness of John. 
The former was a birthright; the latter was a 
conquest. The former was a gift of nature; 
the latter was a trophy of grace. The former 
was a spontaneous breath of the morning; the 
latter was a delicious fragrance which had been 
gathered in the afternoon. Christianity is per- 
fection through suffering, excellence through 
suffering. Even where its fruits are less beau- 
tiful than the fruits of Judaism, they are more 
precious; they can stand the storm. Judaism 
shrank from the storm; its virtues tended to 
wither before the blast. But the virtues of Chris- 
tianity were to be brought upon the blast. They 
were to come to the soul on the wings of the 
wind. They were to be the product not of 
spring but of autumn, not of hereditary bias 



12 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

but of stern experience. Christian faith de- 
manded a cloud. Christian courage demanded 
a fear. Christian love demanded an impedi- 
ment. Christian peace demanded a struggle. 
Christian purity demanded a meeting with the 
tempter in the wilderness. 

Now, in the light of this contrast, I shall look 
at the New Testament Gallery from a different 
standpoint to that from which I surveyed the 
Old. In the previous volumes each portrait 
was accompanied by an adjective expressing its 
quality. I shall now assign to each portrait, 
not a descriptive adjective, but a descriptive 
verb -a verb indicating the particular influence 
which has been exerted over the man and which 
has transformed the man. I should say that in 
tnis world there are always the two classes — the 
men represented by the adjective, and the men 
represented by the verb; the one are the sons 
of nature, the other the sons of grace. The 
Old Gallery represents the first; upon the face 
of its portraits is stamped the impress of a qual- 
ity. But the New Gallery opens another sphere. 
Here the faces of the men reveal, not the quality, 



INTRODUCTION 13 

but the action. The stamp which distinguishes 
these is not so much a possession as a struggle. 
We behold some of them advancing to the bat- 
tle, some in the heat of the fight, some return- 
ing from victory; but all equally give the im- 
pression of a life being moulded by conflict. 
The watchword of this gallery is, * Ye must be- 
come as little children. ' The stress lies not on 
the word * children ' but on the word ' become. ' 
Childhood is a natural possession of all men, 
and its flowers may grow in every field. But 
if childhood be lost and won again, it is no longer 
a mere gift of nature; it is a triumph of grace. 
It is a pearl of great price from the simple fact 
that a price is paid for it, a sacrifice made for 
it. To be a guileless man under the fig-tree 
may be beautiful, but it is the beauty of a star; 
to be guileless amid the haunts of Nazareth, is 
the indication of a higher force of character — 
it is the beauty of a soul. 

It may seem a strange thing that the struggle 
should have come in an age of peace. The dawn 
of Christianity was on a summer morning. It 
came when the political sky was clear. The 



14 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

songs of Bethlehem that proclaimed goodwill 
among men had already in a measure been real- 
ised. The earlier ages had been times of tur- 
bulence; the immediately succeeding ages were 
to be times of turbulence again. But this was a 
calm between two whirlwinds — short-lived, but 
very real. Men for an hour had beat their 
swords into ploughshares and their spears into 
pruning-hooks, and it seemed to many as if they 
would learn the art of war no more. Such was 
the age into which Christ was born. Is it not a 
singular thing that this, of all times, should have 
been the day of moral struggle — the day when 
the flowers of the heart did not spring spon- 
taneously! We should have expected that the 
years of war would have been the years of moral 
crisis — that the hours of danger and terror and 
sword would have been the hours in which the 
inward lives of men would have undergone their 
vital change. 

Yet, in this expectation, I think we are guided 
by an erroneous idea. Is it the case that the 
times of outward war are the times of inward 
conflict.? I do not think so. To my mind, the 



INTRODUCTION 15 

struggles of the soul have always been deepest 
in the ages of peace. The times of war leave 
no leisure for looking within. They bring forth 
brilliant qualities, but they bring them forth with- 
out tillage, and they maintain them without the 
consciousness of their possessor. The times of 
physical danger are like the mists in the Book 
of Genesis which were sent up to water the 
ground. They indeed water the ground, but 
they are apt to hide the process of their own 
working. Before a man can look into himself, 
you must clear away the outward mist. Danger 
is unfavourable to introspection ; even a boy at 
school will forget his answer if you hold the rod 
over him. The truth must be spoken: P.eace, 
and not war, is the vivifier of this world. I 
used to think it an anticlimax when I read the 
prophet's longing for the day when the soldier 
should become a ploughman; but that was be- 
cause I thought the age of the soldier was the 
age of deeper evolution. I know better now. 
The real struggle of life begins when the mind is 
at leisure from its surroundings. It is when a 
man rests from his outward troubles that he be- 



i6 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

gins to strive with himself. Christ said that He 
came not to send peace, but a sword. Yes ; and 
He sent the inward sword just because it was 
a time of outward peace. Had Caesar been at 
war with the world Christ could never have 
waged war in the soul. The war in the soul 
demands a summer day — a day in which we are 
not molested from without. Christ tells His 
followers to pray that their flight be not in the 
winter, and He says well. Winter drives back 
into the old path and arrests the upward ten- 
dency. The misfortunes of life require all our 
energies for themselves; to turn these energies 
inward we need a voice upon the outward sea, 
'Peace, be still!' 

But there is a second characteristic of this 
coming Christian age which is well worthy of 
attention. Not only is it to be a period of in- 
ward transformation but of rapid transforma- 
tion. This quality of the Messianic age had 
been anticipated by far-seeing minds. I do not 
think we attach the real meaning to the pro- 
phetic words of the later Isaiah, *I the Lord 
will hasten it in its time. ' We commonly under- 



INTRODUCTION 17 

stand the saying to mean that the time inter- 
vening till the Messiah comes will be short. To 
my mind, that is not what the Prophet desires 
to say. I understand him to proclaim his convic- 
tion that after the Messiah has come things will 
move at a double-quick march. The idea is, not 
that the coming of the kingdom will be acceler- 
ated, but that, when the kingdom has actually 
arisen, there will be times of acceleration. It 
is equivalent to saying, *In the days of the Mes- 
siah God will cause all things to travel at a rapid 
pace.* Now, we all know that there are times 
of acceleration in the history of this world — 
times in which, to use a Bible phrase, a nation is 
born in a day. Events to which we looked for- 
ward as involving the march of centuries are 
seen to spring up in a night. Developments of 
character whose completion we predicted for 
the end of years are effected by the heat of 
a single summer. Lives which we thought 
would require a series of incarnations to per- 
fect them are made to flower out by one 
drastic experience, and the work which nat- 
urally would have belonged to days is fin- 



i8 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

ished and culminated by the pressure of an 
hour. 

Now, the advent of Christ is one of these 
times. It is a season of accelerated movements. 
The men of the Old Testament grow; the 
men of the New flash. For, what is the specta- 
cle which the Christian Gallery reveals.? It is 
a series of figures rapidly discarding their original 
costume and appearing in a. garb of contrary 
mould. We catch the momentary glimpse of a 
fiery persecutor — it is Saul of Tarsus; we turn 
aside for an instant, and, when next we look, we 
are in the presence of a son of charity. We see 
a man flying from the post of duty because it is 
the post of danger — it is Simon Peter; we avert 
our eyes in disgust. The next moment the man 
stands before us in an opposite vesture: in- 
stead of shunning duty through fear of danger, 
he is almost making danger itself a duty. We 
behold a rather narrow Churchman, devoted to 
externals and eager for ecclesiastical power — it 
is John, son of Zebedee. We divert our gaze 
for a moment toward other things. By and 
by we look again, and lo, the man has lost his 



INTRODUCTION 19 

formalism, lost his ecclesiasticism, lost his pride, 
and is found reclining on the bosom of love ! 

How shall we account for this ? Shall we say 
that it is magical ? No ; there has not been one 
step omitted from the process of normal devel- 
opment. What has happened is that the develop- 
ment has been quickened. The stages of the 
process have not been abridged, but they have 
been hurried on. The kindling of the flower 
has been accelerated by the influence of a spe- 
cial atmosphere. What is that atmosphere? 
What should we expect it to be.? Do we know 
of any influence which has a special power of ac- 
celerating.? Yes — the contact with a great per- 
sonality. I do not know of anything in the world 
which has such power to hasten the steps of the 
mind. A man may live for a whole lifetime 
amid the loveliest and grandest scenery the eye 
can dwell on, and he may remain at the end as 
stolid, as dull, as lethargic as when first he saw 
the light. But let that man meet with another 
man — a higher man, a man of piercing brain and 
potent heart and mesmeric attraction — you will 
see in a week an absolutely radical change. The 



20 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

eye will glisten, the step will lighten, the face will 
brighten ; it will be like the dawning of an inward 
day. Nature has lofty thoughts for those who 
are already lofty, but she cannot speak down — 
cannot address her message to a dormant mind. 
This is precisely what a high soul can do. The 
higher it is, the easier for that soul to speak 
down. The deepest student of a subject will 
best educate the novice, and will most quickly 
educate the novice. There is no influence so 
accelerating as a human influence; one day in 
its courts is better than a thousand days in the 
courts of visible nature. 

And the men of Galilee had come under a hu- 
man influence. They had long been under the 
influence of inspiring scenery, that is to say, of 
scenery which would have inspired cultivated 
minds; yet it had failed to move them from 
their rustic apathy. But suddenly a man ap- 
peared! In the midst of the field there stood 
forth an extraordinary presence! We may call 
him by what name we will — teacher, preacher, 
reformer, philanthropist; his immediate influ- 
ence was something distinct from any of these. 



INTRODUCTION 2j 

It was not what he taught, not what he preached, 
not what he amended ; it was his creation of the 
sense of wonder. Human intelligence begins 
not with an act of understanding, but with the 
feeling that there is something which is not un- 
derstood. The first step in every upward devel- 
opment is the sense of wonder; until that has 
come, we are dormant. The earliest power of 
Jesus was His waking the men of Galilee to won- 
der. He did for these men what the hills could 
not do, what the woods could not do, what the 
stars could not do; He made them ask ques- 
tions. It is the question, not the answer, that 
is the note of dawn. My milestones lie in my 
mysteries — not in my acquirements. Galilee 
struck a new hour when it cried, *What man- 
ner of man is this ! ' It knocked at its first gate 
of wonder. It learned for the first time that 
there was something it could see and not per- 
ceive, something it could hear and not under- 
stand. That sense of ignorance was worth all 
the knowledge in the world. It was the first 
leap out of the darkness, the earliest emergence 
into light. The dove had begun to move on the 



22 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

face of the waters, and its very unrest suggested 
the promise of a new land. 

SON of Man, Thou hast the key to the Sec- 
ond Galleiy — nay, Thou art the key! In 
Thee alone I learn the secret of the world's un- 
rest. Thou Thyself art the secret. We speak 
of the waters being stilled by Thy coming; nay, 
it was Thy coming that stirred the waters. 
The faces of the New Gallery through which 
I am to pass are all the faces of struggling men ; 
but their struggle comes from light, not dark- 
ness; they have seen Thee! They have lost 
their primitive satisfaction. There is a far 
look-out in the eyes, as if they sought some- 
thing not here, as if they heard the murmuring 
of a distant sea. It is because they have seen 
Thee! Thy glory has left a cloud upon the 
common day. The lily of the field is less fair. 
The song of the bird is less buoyant. The scent 
of the hay is less sweet. The blue of the sky is 
less pure. The bosom of the sea is less calm. 
It is all from sight of Thee! Thy sheen has 
thrown all things into shade. Thy radiance has 



INTRODUCTION 23 

broken their rest. Thy beauty has tarnished 
their beam. Thy sweetness has blunted their 
savour. They have faded in front of Thy flow- 
er; they have vanished in touch of Thy voice; 
they have paled in the power of Thy presence; 
they have melted in the blaze of Thy music. 
The men of this New Gallery are less content 
with wood and field ; but it is because their eyes 
have gazed on a higher loveliness — the bright- 
ness of Thy face ! 



CHAPTER II 

JOHN THE EXPANDED 

On the threshold of the New Gallery we are 
met by a portentous figure popularly known as 
John the Baptist. He was the earliest product 
of the influence of that Great Light which was 
about to transform the world. In order of time 
he is the first Christian. He discerned the great- 
ness of Jesus when, outwardly, Jesus was not 
great. He was the earliest who fixed his eyes 
upon the miracle of Christ's character. Nay, 
I am disposed to go further; with the excep- 
tion, I think, of Thomas, he is probably the only 
man of the primitive band who was originally 
attracted to Jesus by the beauty of His moral 
nature alone. Neither Peter nor James nor 
the other John nor Andrew nor Philip nor Na- 
thanael seems to have been at first so attracted; 

they embraced the hope of a physical Messiah. 
24 



JOHN THE EXPANDED 25 

But this man cried, * Behold the Lamb of God ! ' 
It was indeed a voice crying in the wilderness. 
There were very few in the age of Jesus who 
could appreciate the miracle of a sinless life. 
Show them a wonderful boy in the home of Naz- 
areth — a boy who can tell thoughts before they 
are spoken, calculate figures as soon as they 
are stated, get answers to prayers the instant 
they are offered — the home of Nazareth will be 
thronged to suffocation. But tell them that with- 
in that house there lives a thoroughly good child, 
a child of unique goodness — tell them that 
through all the years of his consciousness he 
has never been known to depart from a lamblike 
gentleness, never been seen to deviate from a 
pure affection, never been observed to waver in 
an unselfish spirit — ^you will attract no crowd 
around the cottage door. The traveller will 
pause not to wonder, the spectator will wait not 
to verify ; it will seem to the world an ordinary, 
a commonplace thing. 

It is the glory of John the Baptist that he per- 
ceived the miracle of Nazareth. This man saw 
the wonder precisely in the one spot where his 



26 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

contemporaries could see nothing. Alone of 
all the men in the New Gallery this man is first 
attracted and dominated by that life of Christ 
which preceded outward wonders — His life in the 
home. He had seen no outpouring of the wine 
at Cana. He had beheld no cleansing of the 
temple at Jerusalem. He had witnessed no heal- 
ing at the pool of Bethesda. He had experi- 
enced no glimmer of glory on the Mount of 
Transfiguration. He had not even listened to 
the words of wisdom which have immortalised 
the Hill of Hermon. His vision was only of 
the child.' The spirit of Jesus had to him taken 
the form of a dove. The kingdom of Christ 
which he had seen was the kingdom over Him- 
self in the nursery. He had marked Him out 
as the future Messiah on altogether unique 
grounds. He had demanded a test that could 
be fulfilled in Nazareth. He had asked no prod- 
igies. He had exacted no feats of prowess. He 
had required no evidence of supernatural knowl- 
edge. He had asked sinlessness — a blameless 

^ He seems, on account of his desert life, to have lost 
sight of Him in His manhood ; see John i. 33. 



JOHN THE EXPANDED 27 

record in the cottage home. By His sustaining 
of that test, by His ability to pass through that 
ordeal, the Christ of the Baptist should stand or 
fall. 

I have laid great stress on this point because, 
if I am not mistaken, we are often prone to take 
an erroneous view of John the Baptist. We 
figure a wild man of the woods, half savage and 
wholly physical — a man whose Christ was of 
the earth earthy, whose hopes were centred on 
an outward glory, whose cry was for the carnal, 
whose faith was in the flesh. We think of him 
with a kindly patronage — as wonderfully good 
for the dawn. We insist on allowance being 
made for him. It would be too bad, we say, to 
compare his rise with the rising of such lights 
as Peter and the sons of Zebedee. These men 
saw the Christ full-grown; this man had only 
the tradition of His Nazareth; how can we 
expect the summer from the spring, why look 
to dawn for the brightness of the day ! 

Now, on such an opinion the view I have been 
advocating falls like a clap of thunder. For, ac- 
cording to my reading of John the Baptist, this 



28 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

representative of the earliest Christianity is the 
least primitive of all the Christians. So far 
from contrasting unfavourably with the apostles, 
he actually begins where they end. The latest 
word of these apostles is not the outward miracle 
but the blameless life; it may be said of every 
one of them that to their autumn years *the 
Lamb is all the glory.' But that can be said 
of the Baptist's spring. He antedated their 
experience. While they were hunting after a 
sign of the flesh, he was pursuing a sign of the 
spirit. While they sought an eagle, he followed 
the track of a dove. While they waited for the 
strength of a lion, he placed all his hopes in the 
spotlessness of a lamb. 

The truth is, the original defect of John the 
Baptist was of exactly the opposite nature to 
that commonly attributed to him. So far from 
beginning as a wild man of the woods, the thing 
he lacked was just the forest freedom. In his 
morning he was no son of liberty. He had the 
most exalted view of what it is to be a Christian 
— a more exalted view than any of his contempo- 
raries; but for that very reason he would make 



JOHN THE EXPANDED 29 

no allowances. He was a red-hot revivalist, 
and his revivalism admitted no compromise. 
What he required was not enlightenment; it 
was expansion. Strange as it may seem, I 
hold that what all religious youth requires is 
not enlightenment but expansion. We think of 
youth as the bird of the wilderness flying reck- 
less from bough to bough and destined to get its 
wings clipped in the zenith of the day. That is 
a very good picture of physical youth, but it is 
not religious youth. Religious youth has exact- 
ly the opposite development. It is no bird of the 
wilderness; it is afraid to fly. It is too intense 
to be broad; it settles on a branch and dwells 
there. It sees the fire burning in a single bush ; 
it hears the voice calling from only one tree. 
Its wings may be expected to-morrow, but its 
weights are for to-day. Its path is a narrow 
path, its view is a limited view; it sees through 
a glass darkly and it thinks it sees in full. 

There are, in my opinion, two characteristics 
of the narrowness of religious youth, and they 
are both found in this figure of the Baptist. The 
first I would describe as the inability to wait, in 



30 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

other words, a tendency to see the future with- 
out intermediate view. This man points to his 
Christ and cries, *His fan is in His hand!' — 
ready to be used. Youth habitually scorns the 
intermediate. It is commonly reckoned a proof 
of its expansiveness. In truth it is the reverse; 
it is its inability to fix the eye on any point but 
one. When a child cries, *Not to-morrow, nor 
to-morrow, nor to-morrow, but the next day!' 
what does it mean.? It is really making an at- 
tempt to annihilate from its thought the interme- 
diate days as if they were so much useless lum- 
ber. That little word *not' is equivalent to a 
suppression. It declares that the days between 
Monday and Friday are to be discounted, ig- 
nored, put on one side, and that the string of 
hope should draw the ends so close together as 
to prevent the impression of anything interme< 
diate at all. 

And this is the initial position of John the 
Baptist. He has a child's inability to wait. His 
conception of the Messiah is beautiful beyond his 
time; but his conception of the Messiah's fan 
is premature. When the hills look too near, 



JOHN THE EXPANDED 31 

there will be rain. I am afraidt his great revival 
preacher is preparing for himself a harvest of 
tears. It is grandly exciting, no doubt, to see 
the masses vibrating to the message that the fan 
is already in the hand. But the fan is in reality 
not yet within the grasp of the Christ. To the 
eye of the Baptist the hills look wonderfully 
near, but the deception will ere long reveal itself. 
When he stands in the midst of the crowd and 
cries, * Behold the Lamb of God!' he is on 
strong and trenchant ground ; but when he pre- 
dicts the immediate diffusion of the Lamb's 
purity, he is skating on thin ice. His hearers 
may be enraptured to-day, but they will be anx- 
ious to-morrow and downcast the day after. 
The Baptist has promised too much. He has 
held up the Messiah's winnowing fan in the 
light of the coming Sabbath — has held it so as 
to exclude the light of all intermediate days. 
He has excluded that light from himself as much 
as from his hearers. He has taken the child's 
leap, that leap which indicates not breadth but 
narrowness — the exclusive concentration of the 
eye upon the lamp farthest away. 



32 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

But there is a second characteristic of religious 
youth, and it also is exemplified in this great re- 
vival jpreacher. Religious youth is distinctly 
uncompromising. It never admits the possibil- 
ity of any shades of opinion. A thing is either 
white or black, good or bad, lovely or de- 
formed. This is a tendency, indeed, pertaining 
more or less to childhood in general. The aver- 
age child has no degrees in his love. His heart 
is a clock where only two hours are indicated 
— twelve noon and twelve midnight. Ask if 
he likes any one; you will get an unqualified 
yes or no. We are in the habit of adducing this 
as evidence of the child's outspokenness. But 
in truth the problem lies, not in speaking out, 
nor, for that matter, in speaking at all. It lies in 
the fact that the incipient mind is the imperative 
mind. I do not think it is a mark of strength, 
but the reverse; it indicates, not breadth, but 
narrowness. It implies a limit in judgment, as 
the previous tendency implied a limit in imag- 
ination. It is a mark of crudeness and non- 
development; yet it is capable of existing side 
by side with the most exalted idea of purity. 



JOHN THE EXPANDED 33 

Now, the preacher on the banks of Jordan 
revealed in pronounced colours this uncompro- 
mising spirit of youth. He denied the interme- 
diate shades between night and day. Not only 
was the Messiah's fan already in the hand; it 
was to be used drastically. * He will thoroughly 
purge His floor, and gather His wheat into the 
garner; but He will burn up the chaff with un- 
quenchable fire.' The Baptist is in the same po- 
sition as the servants of Christ's parable. They 
wanted to consume the tares immediately, 
*Wilt Thou that we go and gather them up.?' 
You will remember the answer was. No ; and you 
will remember why — *Lest while ye gather up 
the tares ye root up also the wheat with them.' 
In nothing does the wisdom of Christ shine so 
resplendent over the wisdom of John. John 
thought there were two sets of men — one good 
and the other bad ; to Christ the good and the bad 
nestled in one soul. John thought a fire would 
do all that was wanted ; Christ feared it might do 
more than was wanted. John said, *If a man 
show stubbornness of will, beat it out of him ' ; 
Christ cried, *Not so; you will beat out not 



k 



34 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

only the stubbornness but the will itself — will 
reduce the man to a state of passive imbecility 
where decision is hopeless and choice is im- 
possible.' John proposed to kill evil passion by 
putting an axe at the root of the tree; Christ 
said, *The root of the tree is not evil passion but 
good passion; would you make it impossible to 
sin by making it impossible to feel! would you 
debar from scenes of badness by debarring from 
the sense of sight ! would you cure the tempta- 
tion of the heart by making the heart a stone ! ' 

This, then, is the earliest aspect of John the 
Baptist — the fiery preacher of a very high Chris- 
tianity — incapable of compromise, intolerant of 
middle courses, eager to reduce the outside uni- 
verse into two hemispheres — heaven and hell! 
Take a parting look at the man ! You will never 
see him again in this attitude. Something is 
going to happen, the curtain is about to fall. 
With all its intolerance, with all its uncompro- 
misingness, with all its repelling severity, there 
is something in this figure transcendently grand. 
As it sways to and fro on the banks of Jordan, 
shaken with the pulsations of its own eloquence 






JOHN THE EXPANDED 35 

— ^as it breaks forth, now in passionate invective, 
now in earnest pleading, now in prophetic fer- 
vour — I wonder not that the crowds Hsten and 
tremble. It is a soul walking on a narrow plank ; 
but on that plank he walks with dauntless foot. 
The man speaks with conviction ; and his convic- 
tion is his power. Alone of all the world he has 
seen the King in His moral beauty — has recog- 
nised that lamblike whiteness is better than im- 
perial purple. Basking in that fair ideal of a 
spotless Christ, he demands a spotless world — 
demands it now, here, immediately. If the ac- 
ceptance of Christ meant a change of outward 
government, men might be allowed to linger; 
but the acceptance of Christ meant purity, holi- 
ness, goodness — all that lies within a man's own 
heart, ready for the waking touch of God. This 
was a kingdom that needed no armies nor weap- 
ons nor fortresses; why should it not come to- 
morrow, to-day, this hour ! 

So thought, so spake, John Baptist in the 
morning. But now, as I have said, the scene is 
about to vanish. Even as we gaze, the picture 
melts like snow. Jordan suddenly disappears; 



36 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

the voice of the preacher fades ; the crowd upon 
the bank evaporates as a stream of limehghts, 
and, where the hum of life resounded, univer- 
sal silence reigns. We are on the borders of a 
great tragedy — one of the greatest tragedies in 
history. But what is that tragedy.^ Perhaps 
there are few of us who have realised where con- 
sists the dramatic horror of the situation. Ask 
a Sunday-school child what was the tragedy that 
befell John the Baptist, he will answer without 
hesitation, * In the course of his teaching he de- 
nounced an illegal marriage of Herod, who put 
him in prison and caused him to be beheaded.' 
And yet, that is iiot the dramatic element in the 
case of the Baptist. That was a tragedy to the 
man, but not to the preacher, not to the reform- 
er, not to the Christian forerunner. What was 
the tragedy to Sir Walter Scott } The loss of his 
money? Assuredly not; that might happen to 
the most undistinguished man. But when Scott 
faded in mind, when his powers became para- 
lysed, when his right hand lost its cunning and his 
mighty brain ceased to be a highway for the na- 
tions, then came the real tragedy. It was not 



JOHN THE EXPANDED 37 

genius parting with money; it was genius part- 
ing with itself. 

The Baptist's tragedy was analogous to this. 
It was not his prison; it was not his peril; it 
was not his martyrdom — it was the fact that he 
wavered in his first faith. From the depths of 
his dungeon he sends a message to the ideal of 
his dreams, 'Art Thou He that should come, or 
do we look for another ? ' Nothing, to my mind, 
in the whole history of the Baptist is half so 
tragical as that. And why? Because it is the 
man parting from his innermost self. It is as 
if Shakespeare had lost his passion, as if Tenny- 
son had lost his culture, as if Keats had lost his 
colouring. If this man had kept his confidence 
undimmed we should have looked in vain for the 
element of tragedy; not the dungeon, not the 
persecution by Herod, not the axe of the heads- 
man, could have made the final scene other than 
glorious. But when a cloud fell over his inner- 
most self, when in the flood he lost sight of the 
bow, when his faith wavered, when his one 
strong and seemingly invincible possession re- 
ceived damage on a rock of earth — this is the 



I 



38 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

crisis of the drama, this is the tragedy of the 
scene ! 

Has the Gallery, then, here committed a 
breach of art? Ought the hero to lose his par- 
ticular point of heroism? We can understand 
misfortune, struggle, death; these may only 
brighten the man's special beauty. But that the 
special beauty itself should be falsified, that 
the hero should be untrue to his own soul, that 
the curtain should fall precisely where his lofty 
ideal falls — is that a stroke worthy of artistic en- 
thusiasm ! Is it not specially 2^;Avorthy of that 
great Christian art whose aim is not to destroy 
but to fulfil, and which finds its highest glory 
when it gathers up the fragments that remain ! 

In this instance I do not hesitate to answer, 
No. I say that nowhere has Christianity been 
more optimistic than in allowing the Baptist's 
faith to fail. No other stroke would have im- 
parted full glory to the picture. What is it that 
the Baptist lacks throughout? It is expansion. 
His taint is narrowness. His ideal of Christ was 
magnificent, unique among his contemporaries. 
But he insisted that this ideal should become 



JOHN THE EXPANDED 39 

the immediate possession of the world. He had 
no place for the wavering, no provision for the 
stunted, no tenderness for the specially tempted. 
What this man needed was charity — a deeper 
sympathy with the infirmities of man. And how 
was he to get it.? How is any man to get it.? 
I know of only one way — ^he must be depressed 
in his strong point. Touch him in any other 
point, and you will fail. But touch him where 
he is strong, shake him where he has been im- 
movable, and you open the first inlet for the 
entrance of human charity. The shaking of 
John's faith was a process preparatory to his 
spiritual expansion. It prepared him for the an- 
swer he was about to receive. He had sent a mes- 
sage to Jesus, *Art Thou He that should come.?* 
The reply was on the way, and it was virtu- 
ally an exhortation to remember human frailty. 
Let me try to paraphrase this reply of Jesus. 

*John, it is just because I do not follow your 
method that I am He that should come. Your 
method is a drastic one. You want to begin 
by clearing out the chaff. You want me, when 
I enter the threshing-floor, to look round and be 



40 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

impressed with the absolute purity of all things. 
You want me to be able to say, "I see no blind 
here, no lame, no leper, no deaf, no dead in tres- 
passes and sin, no poor and ignorant requiring to 
be preached to; it is all radiant as a summer 
day." But, my friend, when I come into the 
threshing-floor, that is not what I want to see. 
I wish to see the contrary. I wish to look round 
and see in the foreground the very men you have 
put out — the blind, the lame, the leper, the deaf, 
the spiritually dead, the poor and ignorant. I 
would have all these cleansed, but I would have 
them cleansed from the inside. I demand not 
that the blind should see before they climb the 
mountain; I ask not that the lame should leap 
ere they enter by the Beautiful Gate. Let there 
be no separation between the wheat and the chaff ; 
gather them both into my gamer and let me 
meet them there! Bring in Bartimeus; bring 
in the man of Bethesda; bring in the typical 
Magdalene ; bring in the leper from the tombs ! 
I shall meet the crowd as they are — unwashed, 
uncleansed, unbeautified ; in their rags and 
ruin will I give them my hand. ' 



JOHN THE EXPANDED 41 

That is a real paraphrase of the message from 
Jesus to John. And remember, when it came to 
John it came to a broken-down man — a man 
who had been shaken in the sphere of his proud- 
est confidence. What a magnificent preparation 
for so grand a message ! There was a time when 
John would have scorned to let Bartimeus in ; but 
now his own eye had become dim. . There was a 
time when he would have resented the admission 
of the man of Bethesda; but now his own feet 
had become weary. For the first moment in his 
life he felt himself part of that chaff which he had 
consigned to everlasting fire. There sprang up 
in his soul a fellow-feeling with infirmity. The 
ingathering of the wheat ceased to be the mark 
of Messianic greatness. To take up tenderly the 
withered flower, to plant again the fallen tree, 
to bind the heart that had been wounded, to raise 
the soul that had been bruised, to give a chance 
to the reprobate, to find a fresh start for the 
children of a corrupt heredity, to proclaim a new 
year in which the darkest life might begin once 
more — such was that unique ideal of heroism 
which gave to the dungeon of John's closing days 



42 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

a light of glory which his brightest morning had 
never known! 

I think, then, that the grandest period of the 
Baptist's life was not the days of his wilder- 
ness freedom, but that lonely prison-house from 
which he only came forth to die. The hour of 
his physical chain was the hour of his mental en- 
franchisement. His morning was cribbed, cab- 
ined, and confined. He was like a man that 
never had an illness. He had no sympathy with 
bad health. His besetting weakness was his 
robust constitution. He could not make allow- 
ance for aches and pains, for reaction and weari- 
ness. He needed a special gift from God, and 
that special gift was a privation. Nothing but 
a privation could set the captive free — could 
unbar those gates of sympathy whose closure 
made life to him a desert. But at his evening- 
time there came that light. It was not the dun- 
geon brought it; it was the shaking of his faith 
in his own robustness. That shaking was like 
the cloud on the Mount of Transfiguration. It 
removed Moses and Elias and revealed Jesus 
only. The man of law and the man of fire both 



K JOHN THE EXPANDED 43 

faded from his horizon, and by his side there 
stood in undisputed presence the Man of Mercy. 
Sinai vanished Hke smoke ; Carmel melted like a 
mimic scene ; and, in all the vast expanse, the eye 
of the great preacher rested on one solitary hill 
— the love -lit brow of Calvary. With such a 
vision in his soul the Baptist could afford to die. 

LORD, mine too has been this expansion of 
the inward life. It is the greatest boon a 
human heart can know. And yet, my Father, to 
me, as to the Baptist, it has come through pain. 
He thought his was an hour of mutilation, of in- 
firmit}^, of bondage; he bewailed the cloud that 
had fallen over his faith. But the cloud was sent 
by Thee. Sometimes my faith needs a cloud. 
I may find it so dazzling that I may be blind 
to hope and charity. I may cry, 'Destroy the 
unbelievers, O God; root them out, consume 
them, annihilate them ! ' When I say that, Thou 
sendest my faith a cloud. Thou veilest the 
heavens over Jordan; Thou hidest the dove 
descending; Thou utterest no more the voice 
of the morning. Thou makest me say, *I see 



44 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

it is a harder thing than I thought to be a be- 
Hever ; I have been too severe upon my brother- 
man.* I bless Thee for these ecHpsing mo- 
ments, O my God. I bless Thee that I have 
been touched with the feeling of man's infirm- 
ities. I bless Thee that Thou hast put a tem- 
porary veil over the face of faith; it has un- 
veiled her two sisters — ^hope and charity. When 
my sky was cloudless I despaired of those who 
could not see ; when my faith was fearless I was 
wroth with those who could not believe. But 
my tremor has made me tender, my mist has 
made me merciful, my haze has made me hu- 
man. I have gained more in my night than in 
my day. In my day I soared beyond sympathy ; 
in my night I caught my brother's hand. In my 
day I was solitary on the wing ; in my night I 
had companionship through weakness. In my 
day I believed only in the wheat ; in my night I 
had a kindness for the chaff. In my day I had 
the feeling of a lonely majesty; in my night I 
had the fellowship of a common mystery. It 
was worth while, O Lord, to wear a chain so 
golden ! 



CHAPTER III 

JOHN THE SELF-SURRENDERED 

As I pass from the figure of the Baptist I am ar- 
rested by two other portraits hanging side by 
side. The bystanders tell me that they are in- 
tended to represent one and the same character 
— John, Son of Zebedee. One of the portraits, 
indeed, admits of no doubt on this point ; it has 
the name *John, Son of Zebedee' appended to it. 
The other has no title, no inscription; but all 
the spectators say with one breath, *That is 
another likeness of John.* As I look into the 
faces of these two portraits I am by and by 
startled — not by their likeness but by their dis- 
proportion. They are altogether dissimilar. It 
is not a question of light hair or dark, pale 
cheeks or rosy. It is a difference more vital than 
that — a difference of expression. The professed 
Son of Zebedee has an air of self -consciousness 

about him. I do not say he is selfish; but he 
45 



46 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

is self-conscious. He is playing a noble part; 
but he is aware that he plays it. In a more pro- 
nounced sense than Peter he has a tendency to 
take the lead. He makes a bid for one of the 
two uppermost seats in the Messianic King- 
dom. He takes a portion of Christ's government 
into his own hands in the meantime — he inter- 
rupts on his own account the charities of a man 
who refused to take the name of Christian. He 
comes forward as spokesman when a Samari- 
tan village shuts its gates — he counsels a return 
to the old policy of fire and sword. There are 
circumstances in his life which are favourable 
to self -consciousness. He is not so poor as the 
other disciples. He has more outlets to worldly 
influence than his Galilean brethren — even the 
High Priest Caiaphas has a knowledge of him. 
Above all, he is a mother's darling — the child of 
one who rates him far beyond his present merits, 
who thinks him good enough for anything, and 
who is eagerly ambitious to advance his interests.' 

^ Her ambition, however, was only maternal ; her per- 
sonal attitude to Christ was most unworldly (Matt, xxvii. 
56 ; Mark xv. 40, and xvi. i). 



JOHN THE SELF-SURRENDERED 47 

There is no mirror which a young man should 
subject to such close criticism as that which 
reflects a mother's heart. On the whole, the 
impression conveyed to my mind by this por- 
trait of the professed Son of Zebedee is that of 
a misguided and spoiled boy. 

But turn now to the other, the nameless pic- 
ture. It is a complete contrast. If the former 
was self-conscious, this is self-forgetting. We 
look into a face whose own look is far away. 
We feel that we are in the presence of a personal- 
ity which is almost oblivious of its outward sur- 
roundings, altogether oblivious of itself. There 
is no phrase which to my mind would describe 
him so well as 'the anonymous man.' It is 
not only that he never gives his name; he never 
thinks of his name. In all that he does, in all 
that he meditates, he keeps hid from himself. 
The typical attitude in which he is painted is 
that of a man lying on Christ's bosom. And 
it truly describes him. This later portrait is 
that of one who rests upon the bosom of human- 
ity. There is one word which has become his 
keynote — brotherhood. The man who in the 



48 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

former painting asked a private seat above 
the reach of the common crowd is found in this 
later delineation elbowing his way into the heart 
of that crowd and seeking to bury the very 
memory of his name in the sense of a life which 
made him one with the multitude. 

These are the two portraits. What is their 
relation to one another .f* The bystanders who 
first occupied the Gallery were convinced that 
they represented one and the same man. But 
the modern bystanders have been divided in opin- 
ion. Some have held by the original spectators 
— recognising that there may be two sides to the 
same character. Others have been unable thus 
to bridge the chasm. They have felt that these 
two portraits are separated by the gulf of Dives, 
that they cannot be thought of as two sides of 
a life or two phases of a character, that they be- 
long to different atmospheres — one to earth and 
the other to heaven — one to the mist over the 
river, and the other to the mountain peak lit 
by the morning sun. 

Now, I want to put a question. In point of 
fact, there is in the New Testament Gallery an 



I 



JOHN THE SELF-SURRENDERED 49 

instance in which two portraits of the same man 
are even more pronouncedly different than those 
attributed to the Son of Zebedee. I allude to 
the picture of Saul of Tarsus and the subse- 
quent picture of Paul the Apostle. The question 
I put is this, Why does no one say that these 
cannot represent the same man? Of course the 
answer will be immediate. You will say, This 
man, Saul of Tarsus, admittedly turned a somer- 
sault ; his was a conversion, a transformation, an 
emergence from darkness into light. And it is 
quite true that Saul of Tarsus turned a somer- 
sault. It is quite true that, as he says himself, 
he passed through a change equal to that of crea- 
tion in its emergence from chaos. What is not 
true is the notion that in this transformation of 
Saul there is anything exceptional. If we ex- 
clude John the Baptist, who was in the deepest 
sense a forerunner, I do not know a man of the 
Gallery who had not as much need of transfor- 
mation as Saul of Tarsus. It is true he was a 
persecutor; but negative indifference is often 
a bigger gulf than positive opposition. What 
separated the Christian and the Jew was not 



50 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

their hostility; it was their ideas. The chasm 
between them was as great ere ever one oppos- 
ing voice had been raised on either side. I 
must repeat what I have already said — the New 
Gallery is not a painting of qualities but a paint- 
ing of transformations. Each is a different 
transformation ; Paul exhibits one, John exhibits 
another. If we allow the double, nay, the con- 
tradictory delineation for Paul, why should we 
not make the same allowance for John! What 
we see in his case is what we see in the case 
of the man of Tarsus — transformation. It is 
the change from egotism into impersonality, 
from consciousness into forgetfulness, from 
self into self - surrender. What happened to 
John was the breaking of his mirror — the 
smashing into fragments of that glass by which 
he had shone reflected in his own sight 
and had appeared the prime actor in the great 
drama. 

When did this destruction of the mirror take 
place? Why should we speak of it as a * smash 
ing' ? Would it not be the result of develop- 
ment? Undoubtedly. But in all development 



JOHN THE SELF-SURRENDERED 51 

there is one crucial moment — a moment which 
marks the boundary-Hne. The building up of 
individual life is a development — a progress 
from stage to stage. But there is a special in- 
stant in which what we call deadness passes into 
life. It matters not what theory of life you 
hold. You may say, if you like, with Herbert 
Spencer, that it is simply the adjustment of 
the organism to its environment. Very well. 
But there is a moment, a crisis moment, in 
which that adjustment is complete, and in that 
moment we pass from death unto life. Death 
in its natural course is also a development — a 
gradual process of exhaustion. But there is 
a point in which the process becomes an act, a 
moment of immediate transformation in which 
there is no longer any room for develop- 
ment, and in which the change is abrupt, un- 
graduated, instantaneous — ^we say, *The man is 
dead.* 

And John had a crisis moment. It came, I 
believe, in that hour when his egotism seemed 
to have soared into its climax — when, swayed by 
a mother's ambition, he asked the front seat 



52 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

in the Kingdom. * And it was with him as with 
Paul — the hour of his deepest moral need was 
the hour of his revelation. For a moment the 
man of Galilee, like the man of Tarsus, saw 
heaven open. And what a heaven it was! It 
was a reversal of all his dreams. In answer to 
his ignorant and presumptuous prayer Christ 
simply raised the curtain and let the man see 
in. The sight which met his gaze paralysed 
his earthly wings for evermore; the soaring 
ceased, the bird fell. For, what was it he saw 
— ^what was it we all saw .? It was a new ideal of 
greatness. It was not only John the fisherman 
who was transformed by that hour. We were 
all transformed — kings and senators, empires 
and civilisations. The world never got back to 
its old regime. What was that old regime.? It 
was the idea that the greatest man is he who 
has the million for his servants. But when 
Jesus said to John, * Whosoever will be great 
among you, let him be your minister,' He 

* On mature reflection, I would place this incident 
much earlier than I did in my Studies of the Portrait of 
Christ. 



JOHN THE SELF-SURRENDERED 53 

founded a new regime; He declared that the 
greatest man is he who is the servant of the 
million. That the Son of Man — the ideal of all 
royalty, the synonym for all heroism, should be 
linked not with mastery but with subordination, 
that the name to a child of Israel most sugges- 
tive of power should be associated with subservi- 
ence to classes and masses alike, that the life 
of the potentate should be identified in its deepest 
essence with a voluntary adoption of the life of 
the slave — this was not only an epoch-making 
thought but a thought which has re-moulded all 
the epochs. We need not wonder that it re- 
moulded John. 

I should say, then, that this was to John the 
smashing of the mirror. It was his crisis mo- 
ment. In one of his letters which has always 
seemed to me to have a ring of autobiography he 
speaks of having * passed from death unto life.* 
Those are the words of a man who has been 
conscious of a crisis. They express the sense, 
not of a process, but of an act. Doubtless there 
had been a process too — subtle, hidden, under- 
ground; the greater part of our preparation for 



54 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

the Kingdom is an unconscious preparation. 
Kut, as I have said, to John as to every devel- 
oping man there comes a boundary moment, a 
point at which the soul must pass over. We 
may have a very long walk to the river; but, 
when we have reached the river, walking is at 
an end — the remainder of the journey is to be 
completed by a plunge. John is conscious of 
a plunge — of having 'passed over.' He is con- 
scious of having been on two banks of the river 
— of having made the transition from the bosom 
of his mother Salome to the bosom of the Son of 
Man. He has exchanged the love of self for 
the love of humanity, ambition for ardour, ego- 
tism for enthusiasm. He feels that the former 
man is dead — that death itself could not produce 
a greater change. He forgets all the rest of 
the process in the transition of a single moment ; 
and no moment is to my mind so likely as that 
in which on the plains of earth the Son of Man 
revealed to him the ideal of heavenly greatness. 

But there is one point on which I think many 
of us have been under a great misapprehension. 
The popular notion seems to be that John made 



JOHN THE SELF-SURRENDERED 55 

a transition from a very masculine to a very ef- 
feminate nature. I believe it to have been ex- 
actly the reverse. I have already expressed the 
opinion that the influence of John's mother was 
in the first instance unfavourable to him. He 
was too much under her tuition and imbibed too 
much of her spirit. It was a great mistake to 
imagine that the early petulance and vehemence 
of John are the mark of a nature not effeminate. 
They come direct from effeminacy. If the origi- 
nal picture is less gentle than the later picture, it 
is precisely because it is more effeminate. Those 
sudden gusts of temper, those sweeping breezes 
of passion, those eruptions of the lava stream that 
destroy Samaria and wither even a good man 
if he refuse to join the Church — whence come 
they? Just from that which is the root of 
effeminacy — the absence of self-restraint, the 
inability to pause and deliberate, the inefficiency 
of that protective wall which prevents the im- 
pulses of the heart from running over. 

What John received from his transformation 
was a virile soul ; and it was his virile soul that 
made his gentleness. I have said that his out- 



56 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN r 

burst over Samaria came from the unrestraint 
of a nature too soft to bind its wrath. But we 
shall commit a great error if we imagine that the 
calmness of his after-life came from a suppres- 
sion of his power to feel. I have no hesitation 
in saying that there is more evidence of intense 
and burning feeling in the second picture than 
in the first. You look at a windless, waveless 
sea whose surface is unruffled and whose bosom 
is unclouded. But you do not look long before 
you find that the stress has been only trans- 
ferred into the interior. You see heavings be- 
low; you hear repressed mutterings under- 
neath; you detect the shadow of a submarine 
hand holding back the depths with iron grasp 
and creating the surface calm by the very force 
of its inward struggle. Listen to the cry that 
breaks out in one of John's letters ! — * If a man 
say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a 
liar.' Is that the language of a weakling, of 
a man emasculated, enervated, emptied of his 
spirit of fire! Is it not clear that it is the fire 
which is trying John's work — subjecting him to 
the crucial test of whether his gentleness has yet 



JOHN THE SELF-SURRENDERED 57 

made him great, whether he has reached that gift 
which was absent from his boyhood — the power 
to be scorched without scorching, to be smitten 
and not smite ! 

Do you know what I think the strongest evi- 
dence of that self-restraint which became the 
flower of the Son of Zebedee? It hes, I be- 
lieve, in something not on the surface, something 
for which you must read between the lines. 
There are many moments of love which are not 
self-restraint, but, in the most sublime sense, 
self-indulgence. I would not say, for example, 
that the lying on the Master's bosom was a mark 
of restraint; I can imagine no greater lux- 
ury. I would not say that the standing at the 
foot of the cross was a mark of restraint; we 
wonder that the others could restrain themselves 
from being there. But the fact which I think 
reveals the transformed John in his summer bloom 
is his attitude to Judas Iscariot. In nothing 
does he come so near his Lord. I believe that 
the only two of the primitive band who detected 
Judas before the time were John and his Mas- 
ter; upon the rest the betrayal fell like a clap 



58 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

of thunder. John and his Master alone saw 
the blemish in tJie bud. We know that the Son 
of Zebedee shared in the perception which had 
broken upon his Master, because he tells us so. 
Nobody can read the Fourth Gospel without 
being impressed \\ath the bitter and implacable 
loathing which this man by nature entertained 
for Judas — a loathing more strong, more deep, 
and more outspoken than is displayed by any 
of his comrades. This is the fact as it appears 
on the face of the narrative. The beloved dis- 
ciple has come into the dark secret of his Mas- 
ter. He has detected the blackness in a human 
soul. How does he act in these circumstances } 
Does he repeat the vituperation that he launched 
at the Samaritan village? Does he call upon 
the fire to come dowTi and consume the mis- 
creant } Does he denounce this man as he de- 
nounced the other man for working in a Name he 
did not worship.? No; he has learned self-re- 
straint now. He conceals his revelation. He 
meets Judas as he meets Peter. He meets him 
at the council, he meets him at the feast, he 
meets him in that solemn hour sacred to the 



JOHN THE SELF-SURRENDERED 59 

coming bereavement — the hour of all others when 
we sigh for kindred souls. He meets him, he 
greets him, as a brother ; he represses the pent- 
up fury of his heart. 

The question is, Why? I have said it was 
self-restraint; but the question still remains — 
Why.? There is no such thing in Christianity 
as self-restraint for its own sake. It is not a 
Christian virtue; it is a Stoic virtue. There 
are hundreds who have passed through the 
fiery furnace and never revealed that they got 
any hurt; the mind can be taught to suppress 
its cries. But Christian self-restraint is not 
suppression; it is surrender. I may keep back 
my cry from pride, or I may keep back my cry 
because I have seen a possibility of succour. 
John's attitude to Judas is the latter of these. 
Why does he treat him as a brother? Because 
in the companionship of the Master he had 
awakened to the sense of brotherhood. As 
long as the shell had not burst, John and his 
Master had a ray of hope for Judas. Did you 
ever ask yourself the reason of Christ's open 
proclamation of the prophecy, *One of you 



6o THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

shall betray me.' *To show His miraculous 
power,' you say. What I regard as an unhappy 
gloss has put that reason into Christ's mouth; 
but He Himself would have repudiated it. It 
required no miraculous power to see through Ju- 
das, nor was there any miracle in the vision. I 
ask again, therefore, Why does Christ in the 
presence of Judas himself keep ringing the 
changes of the prophecy, * One of you shall be- 
tray me' } And I answer, *It is in the hope 
that the prophecy will not come true.' He 
wants the man to take fright at the mirror of 
himself — as David did when he was painted by 
Nathan, as Nineveh did when it was pictured by 
Jonah. If by any chance he could see him- 
self — if for him, bad as he was, lurid as he was, 
repulsive as he was, there could lurk in some cor- 
ner, however small, the tiniest patch of green — 
if any stray word could waken him, any chance 
light scorch him, any sudden snapshot reveal 
him to himself — the Master would be proud 
that His prophecy should fail. 

Now, I believe Christ's first work for the 
transformed John was the bearing with Judas. 



JOHN THE SELF-SURRENDERED 6i 

When he had reached the spiritual shore — that 
state which, though on earth, he called the 
world beyond death — the first work that awaited 
him was a reversal of his past. As an arrogant 
youth, he had called upon the flames to wrap 
round and round the walls of a Samaritan village 
that had closed its gates on Jesus. But here 
was a spectacle compared to which the guilt of 
Samaria's village grew pale! Here was a life 
closing its gates — body and soul, nerve and 
sinew, heart and brain; here was a mind so 
dark, so irresponsive, so unsympathetic that 
John himself in a moment of self-communion 
calls him the * son of perdition ' ! ^ But a voice 
says: *Do not accelerate the perdition; do 
not anticipate the perdition; give the man a 
chance — ^a chance in your own heart! Do not 
let the fire come down upon Samaria even in 
imagination! Keep it away from your fancy; 
hope against it ; pray against it ; love against it ! 

* I believe the words, 'None of them is lost, but the 
son of perdition ' to be John's passing comment on the 
statement of Christ's prayer, ' Those that Thou gavest 
me I have kept ' (John xvii. 12). 



62 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

I do not say, 'Restrain yourself, curb yourself, 
control yourself ! ' — I would rather prescribe the 
wing than the chain. Bathe yourself in broth- 
erhood, lave yourself in love, hide yourself in 
humanity, sun yourself in the service of man ; 
and you will no more need to pray, " Keep back 
my angry soul ! '" 

Here is a fitting place to bid John farewell — 
in that haven of love which was to him the 
other side of death. Three times, in the testi- 
mony of after-days, the curtain rises on the man. 
Very surprising to me are these successive 
risings. Viewed as historical or viewed as tra- 
ditional, they mark the true sequence of the 
spiritual life. Life has ever three typical peri- 
ods; I would call them the age of imagination, 
the age of reason, and the age of simplicity. 
We all begin with our Apocalypse — our sight 
of a city of gold with pearly gates and crystal 
fountains and nightless skies. We do not 
move forward through life; we move backward. 
The first thing we see is the drama completed. 
The dawn that greets the eye of youth is not the 
dawn of its own morning but the dawn of fu- 



JOHN THE SELF-SURRENDERED 63 

turity. Yesterday has no power, to-day has 
no power ; we light our torch at the sun of to- 
morrow. Then comes the second step, and it 
is a step backward. We fall into the present 
world. Reason takes the place of imagination. 
To-morrow fades in to-day. Instead of looking 
forward we look round. We begin to ask, Who 
are we.? — Where are we? — What is the cause 
of our being.? — Why are there so many streets 
that are not golden, so many gates that are not 
of pearl, so many skies that are all night .? By 
and by there comes a third and final stage. It 
is what we should have expected to come first — 
the past of the man. He ends where we should 
have looked for him to begin — ^in the simplic- 
ity of a child. Arguments lose their interest; 
theories cease to trouble; questionings are not 
long harboured in the mind — after the days of 
tracing come the days of trusting. 

And these are the curtains that rise over the 
subsequent life of John. We see the heart of 
youth swelling with the anticipation of future 
glories — the man of the Apocalypse, the man of 
Patmos. Then we see the heart of maturity — 



64 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

the sober, grave, and reverent senior, living en- 
tirely in the problems of his age, and striving 
to mould philosophy into the image of his 
Christ ; it is the man of research, the man of the 
Fourth Gospel. At last there comes the final 
raising of the curtain; and we see a little child. 
He has gone back to the past. We have a series 
of charmingly simple letters which make the 
close of his life a tribute to the instincts of 
childhood. The harp of youth may have lost 
most of its strings, the accents of philosophy 
may have ceased to charm; but there is one 
primitive word that dominates, rules, over-rules 
— it is Move.' That word — the child's first 
medium of revelation — becomes to this old man 
the one test of all spiritual beauty, the one proof 
that God is true, the one unassailable evidence 
of the destiny and the mission of man. 

MY Father, when I look at Thy Great Gal- 
lery of Christian souls, it brings a deep 
comfort to my heart to know that they were not 
always beautiful. If theirs had been a native 
splendour, I should have sunk beneath the glow. 



JOHN THE SELF-SURRENDERED 65 

But I bless Thee that these beautiful faces have 
been gifts from Thee. I bless Thee that in the 
opening of their lives they were so very plain. 
It is not a prodigy that gives me hope ; it is a dull 
boy rising to distinction. Even so, my hope 
of loveliness is when I see beauty come from 
unpromising soil. I thank Thee that Thou hast 
let me see the dust of the earth out of which 
came the beloved disciple — the egotism, the van- 
ity, the worldly ambition, the forgetfulness of 
others, the unrestrained passion, the dictatorial 
pride, the mirror of self-consciousness filling all 
the heart. It is an unholy picture; but it 
makes me throb with the promise and potency 
of holiness. For, this is the man who summers 
in the bowers of eternal beauty — in the haven 
of cloudless love ! This is the man that rests on 
the bosom of Thy fair Christ ! He has climbed 
from rags into radiance. He has soared from 
dust into divinity. He has mounted from 
the shadow into the sunshine. Therefore, my 
Father, there is hope for me — not of bare salva- 
tion, but of the glory of an archangel. I too 

may bask in Thy heights; I too may dwell in 
5 



66 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

Thy nightless skies. Only let Thy Christ stand 
over my dust, and it will bloom. One sight of 
Him will break the mirror of my vanity. One 
touch of Him will still the beatings of my ambi- 
tion. One tone of Him will give my passions 
calm. One sigh of Him will shatter all my 
pride. One memory of Him will make me re- 
member myself no more. Transform me by 
Thy Christ, O my God! 



1 



CHAPTER IV 

NATHANAEL THE INVIGORATED 

As we advance through the Great Gallery we 
are confronted by a face which has left its 
impress on the canvas of all time; it is that of 
Nathanael. There are three voices in the verb 
*to live' — ^being, doing, suffering. There are 
some who come into this world to *do'; they 
are sent to work out a mission. There are some 
who come into this world to *bear'; their 
special gift from God has been a thorn. But 
there are a few who are sent neither to do nor 
to bear, but simply to *be.' Nathanael belongs 
to the last class. If you ask what he did, I can- 
not tell. I can tell what Peter did, what John 
did, what Paul did — but not what Nathanael did. 
His mission was his being, and his being was 
his beauty. We feel as if we were watching a 
child whose years are to be few, and for whom 

67 



68 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

there is no active work designed, yet whose 
petals we see unfolding and whose buds we be- 
hold expanding. The picture of Nathanael is 
strictly the unfolding of a flower. We are ac- 
customed to say that we are told nothing about 
him. Nothing of what he did, nothing of what 
he bore — ^but of what he was, a whole biography ! 
Come and unfold the flower with me as it 
grows under the fig-tree ! It is the only life in 
the New Testament Gallery which is revealed 
emerging from rustic scenes. Peter, Andrew, 
James, the apostle John, probably Philip, rise 
from the sea. Matthew issues from the ex- 
change. Mark comes from a secretary's room. 
Nicodemus seems to have come out of a library. 
But Nathanael emerges from under a fig-tree.' 
He is the rustic of the primitive band. Rustic- 
ity is the first stage of his life-flower. A native 
of Cana in Galilee, he has never left that village 
for any contact with a busy town. He has not 
rubbed with the world, and he remains still an 
artless child — free from scheming, free from am- 

* It is possible, in the light of John xxi. 2 and 3, that 
at an after-date he joined the fisherman's craft. 



NATHANAEL THE INVIGORATED 69 

bition, free from jealousy, free from the conscious- 
ness of self. He is without vices; but as yet 
it is only the faultlessness of rustic simplicity. 

I think we are in a great mistake about the 
meaning of these words which Jesus spoke of 
Nathanael, * Behold an Israelite indeed, in 
whom is no guile.* As popularly understood, 
they would be a eulogium fit to emblazon on the 
wings of angel or archangel, cherub or seraph. 
If Nathanael has reached this altitude, why call 
him to Jesus at all! Could Christ do more for 
any man than make him free from guile! If 
this man has reached the climax, he has no need 
of the climbing ; the ladder from earth to heaven 
is in his case quite superfluous ! Let him remain 
under the fig-tree and meditate on his own skies ; 
he can see no greater things than these ! 

But my reading of this passage is very differ- 
ent. I would paraphrase it thus: *It is not 
opposition I am afraid of ; it is dishonest opposi- 
tion. I see a man resting under a tree. He is 
a thorough Israelite — earnestly devoted to the 
Rabbinical traditions of his country, and therefore 
naturally not in sympathy with me. Yet in his 



70 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

opposition there is no guile. There is nothing 
mean about it, nothing personal, nothing paltry. 
He is genuinely afraid of the new movement — 
afraid from the highest, purest motives. There 
will be an opposition which will come from 
guile. Men will refuse to come to me through 
fear of the cross, through dread of the sacrifice 
which my religion involves. But here is a man 
who is afraid he will lose the cross, afraid he 
will be deprived of the chance of sacrifice. He 
says, " Can any good thing come out of Naza- 
reth ! " He thinks my religion will be too gay 
a thing, too sportive, too joyous. He distrusts 
Nazareth, he distrusts any part of Galilee. Gal- 
ilee is too near the Gentiles for him — too near 
the confluence of the sinful nations who spend 
their life in eating and drinkmg, marrying and 
giving in marriage. He fears it will be a world- 
ly religion, withdrawing the mind from what is 
serious and making the faith of Israel an imita- 
tion of the games of Greece.' 

Consider, for a rustic like Nathanael and one 
with the weakness of a rustic, there was nothing 
strange in his entertaining such a presentiment. 



I 



NATHANAEL THE INVIGORATED 71 

For let us remember that Christianity is the only 
religious revival in the world which has come in 
gay attire. Everywhere else the revival of re- 
ligion has appeared in dust and ashes ; men have 
beat upon their breasts and cried, ^Unclean!' 
Christ Himself was at first disposed to fast ; but 
He had changed His thought — changed it for 
the ringing of bells and the playing of dance- 
music. And the sequel was to emphasise the 
change. Any man of the Baptist's school would 
be startled out of his senses by what he was to 
see. He would see Jesus Himself immediately 
after His opening ministry^ providing for the 
supply of wine at a marriage feast! He would 
see this same Jesus turning a religious meeting 
into a social picnic because He saw that the 
people were faint and weary! He would see 
Matthew signalising his conversion by a sumptu- 
ous dinner to his friends ! He would see young 
ministers after the Sunday-morning service 
walking in the fields and plucking the cars of 
corn! He would see Martha — not in spite of, 

* John's first chapters presuppose that Christ was in 
the air previous to the feast of Cana. 



72 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

but by reason of, Christ's presence — spreading 
the richest repast that ever graced a table in 
Bethany! All this he would be compelled to 
view. 

And what would he feel? Very much, I 
think, what a former generation of simple coun 
try-people felt when the innovations of modem 
science first broke upon the scene. When the 
white sail was supplanted by the black wTeaths 
of the steamer; when the shrill railway -whistle 
woke the silent air; when a message was sent 
to India and an answer came back within an hour ; 
when a man was told that he could speak to his 
brother through a distance of sixteen hundred 
miles; when, later still, the voices of men were 
bottled up in jars, carried across the Atlantic, 
and made to deliver speeches or sing songs after 
perhaps their original owners had passed away 
from earth — I say, such revelations as these 
must have shaken all the lives reposing under 
the fig-tree. They must have felt as if private 
communion were abolished, as if the life of 
public day had extinguished for ever the possi- 
bilities of the quiet hour, as if there were no 



1 



NATHANAEL THE INVIGORATED 73 

longer a meeting-place between the soul and 
God. 

I have attributed to Nathanael the weakness 
of the rustic. Some may be shocked by the 
ascription. But to me it is an impossible sup- 
position that Jesus had any need to convert a 
man who was already in the literal sense holy, 
harmless, undefiled. Christ came to transform ; 
if Nathanael was perfect, there was nothing to 
change in him. I think there was something 
to change. I believe that originally his under- 
standing was narrow ; he wanted mental vigour, 
and Christ called him to give him that vigour. 
To me the want of mental vigour appears more 
in the second stage of the flower than in the first. 
It is not so much in his opposition to Christ as 
in his acceptance of Christ that the weakness is 
seen. If he was opposed to Christ on inadequate 
evidence, he accepted Him on evidence more 
inadequate still. The narrative is given in very 
direct and simple terms, and may be briefly re- 
capitulated. 

Philip runs into Nathanael' s retreat and ac- 
costs him with the virtual announcement, *The 



74 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

Messiah is come — the long-expected, the long- 
desired; He is come in the person of a toiling 
man, a man of Nazareth!' 'That cannot be,* 
cries Nathanael; *we who are of Galilee know 
too much about its sinfulness to recognise a 
Christ from Nazareth!' 'Instead of arguing 
about the matter,' exclaims Philip, 'come and see 
for yourself ; look at the man with your own eyes, 
and judge him!' Nathanael agrees to the 
test. He is brought right into the presence of 
Jesus. Jesus greets him as one with whom 
He had long been familiar. 'How do you 
know me ? ' says Nathanael. Jesus answers, ' I 
saw you sitting under the fig-tree before any 
man's attention was directed to you.' Then, 
with a great rush of enthusiasm, with a gust of 
conviction that swept all before it, Nathanael 
breaks forth into the vehement exclamation, 
* Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God, Thou art the 
King of Israeli' 

Now, I have no hesitation in saying that the 
rustic was prominent here. Nathanael had en- 
tered upon a great sea in a boat that was not fit to 
bear a single gale. The conclusion was far too 



NATHANAEL THE INVIGORATED 75 

big for the premises. He had rested the Mes- 
siahship of Jesus on what would now be called 
an act of clairvoyance — a, power to see things at 
a distance. That was no mark of Messiahship ; 
I doubt if it was even a necessary mark of good- 
ness. It was a possession of the prophets 
— ^and there were bad men with the prophetic 
faculty. So far as I see, all the wicked peo- 
ple in Nazareth might have had this power 
without in the slightest degree diminishing 
their wickedness. Nathanael was here untrue 
to that fine moral bias which had prompted his 
original prejudice. The moral bias was the one 
good thing about the prejudice. He was then 
in search of goodness from his Christ; it was 
a terrible fall to come down to clairvoyance. 
Jesus Himself was surprised at the crude convic- 
tion. * Because I said I saw thee under the fig- 
tree, believest thou ! ' It is not the glad surprise 
He expressed later at the faith of the Phoenician 
woman. He recognises, no doubt, that Nathan- 
ael has made an advance — that the flower has 
actually found its way into the light; but He 
feels that it has dropped something in the proc- 



76 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

ess. Nathanael has lowered his demand. He 
has abated his claim. He has consented to take 
less from his Christ than he asked under the 
fig-tree. There, he had demanded a Christ who 
should come from a holy soil, whose environ- 
ment should be solemn, whose tread should be 
serious. Now, he has for the time forgotten 
these impressions, and is willing to reverence a 
King who has the attribute of second sight ! 

Let us understand this matter. The Christ 
of the Gospels desires beyond all things to se- 
cure proximity to Himself. He will accept that 
on any terms — even should the coming be for 
the sake of the loaves; He knows that mere 
proximity will eventually kindle fire. But in 
the case of such inadequate motives there is ab- 
sent an element of joy. It is not that there is 
little faith. I believe Nathanael had enormous 
faith. I believe he would have gone to the stake 
for his faith. I think his conviction at that mo- 
ment was deeper than that of any of the previ- 
ous converts — deeper than Peter's or John's or 
Philip's or Andrew's. But the conviction itself 
was based on something which Christ did not 



NATHANAEL THE INVIGORATED 77 

hold to be an essential part of His system. Let 
me try to illustrate the difference between the 
* little faith' and the * inadequate faith.' 

Imagine that a popular plebiscite were taken 
with the view of ascertaining the public's esti- 
mate of some great poet— let us say, Robert 
Browning. Let us suppose that hundreds of 
sheets were crowded with panegyrics and a few 
tens with adverse criticisms. But let us con- 
ceive the idea that the list was closed by two 
very unique statements of opinion, neither of 
which could be described as either eulogy or 
blame, and which by their very eccentricity 
excited much attention. Let us imagine the 
contents of these two paragraphs. We begin 
with the last but one. 

It says : * I believe that Browning has a power 
which I have not perceived. His great poems 
are quite obscure to me. I cannot understand 
Sordello ; I cannot fathom Paracelsus ; I can- 
not unravel The Ring and the Book. I must 
say, with the Psalmist, "Such knowledge is 
too great for me; it is high; I cannot attain 
unto it" Yet I am willing t6 believe that the 



78 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

error is in me. The reason is that when I 
read some of his small pieces, such as Evelyn 
Hope and Easter Day, I feel charmed both with 
thought and style. These fragments enliven 
me, refresh me, quicken me. I would come to 
Browning for these tiny sparks from the anvil. 
The great work of his forge is meaningless to 
me ; but the sparks have light and warmth, and 
they seem to beckon me on to the hope of 
higher vision.* 

Now, I should say that this man had 'a little 
faith ' in Browning. He believes in him to the 
extent of Evelyn Hope and Easter Day ; and on 
account of that belief he distrusts his adverse 
judgment of the rest. These are elements of 
faith — very few, very fragmentary, very simple, 
but pointing in the right direction. Let us 
look now at the other and latest paragraph; 
it breathes a sentiment wholly different, and 
must be measured by a standard of its own. 

It says: *I am sure that Browning is a bom 
poet. I have never read him, but I have done 
better — I have come into contact with his 
soul. I was privileged once to meet him, to 



NATHANAEL THE INVIGORATED 79 

be introduced to him. It was under a tree. I 
had run beneath its branches for shelter from a 
passing shower, and there I found a group al- 
ready gathered, of whom Browning was one. 
He was made known to me ; and it seemed as if 
he had known me all along. His manner was 
that of a familiar friend. Nothing could exceed 
his courtesy, his urbanity, his freedom from 
self -consciousness, his personal interest in the 
things of which I spoke. I felt then and I feel 
now that only the soul of a poet could have 
enabled any man to throw himself thus into the 
life of another. ' 

I ask, What is the position of this man? Is 
he in want of faith? No; he has boundless 
faith ; he has crowned his ideal with full laurels. 
But then, it is Nathanael's crown — a, crown 
given for inadequate causes. He has accepted 
Browning as his laureate, not on account of his 
poetry, but on account of an interview under a 
tree. He has reached a royal conclusion by 
faulty premises. No doubt it is good that in 
any capacity he should stand near Browning. 
We will not rob him of his place; hereafter he 



8o THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

may bloom by reason of the contact. We only 
claim the right to say that he has reached this 
place by a short and easy method, and that he 
will some day have to fall back to conquer the 
unappropriated ground. 

And now I come to the third and final step 
in the spiritual history of Nathanael. It is 
announced by Jesus as something still in the 
future which is awaiting him and all of them; 
but it is announced as a positive certainty — 
with the formula, * Verily, verily, I say unto 
you.' Jesus predicts Nathanael's mental in- 
vigoration. He predicts the time when he will 
base His claims on something higher than a 
case of physical clairvoyance — *You shall see 
heaven open, and the angels of God ascend- 
ing and descending upon the Son of Man. * 

What does this mean? Literally it says, 
*You Nathanael, and the rest of you, will yet 
see the fulfilment of Jacob's vision.' But what 
was Jacob's vision? It was the vision of God's 
charity to man. The angels are ascending and 
descending for purposes of ministration; they 
are the ministrant spirits of the old dispensa- 



NATHANAEL THE INVIGORATED 8i 

tion. But there is one statement of Christ which 
is an addition to the picture, and which is to 
my mind strikingly original. It is the words, 
*upon the Son of Man.' I do not think we have 
grasped the significance of these words. Jesus 
claims charity as the special evidence of His 
religion. He says that He is the basis of all 
philanthropy, of all benevolence, of all humani- 
tarian effort. He refuses the name of charity 
to anything which does not move *on the steps 
of the Son of Man.' He tells Nathanael that 
this, and not clairvoyance, is to be the sign of 
His Messiahship. He claims to be the founder 
of active sympathy; on His steps alone could 
it descend from heaven ; other foundation could 
no man lay. 

Consider. In the world before Christ, in the 
world into which Christ was born, charity had 
sought to descend by the steps of other lad- 
ders. The Stoic had preached forgiveness of 
injury; but the ladder on which he descended 
was the sense of contempt for man. Nobody 
was worth being angry at, nobody was worth 

quarrelling with. The mass of the human 
6 



82 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

race were poor creatures, too insignificant to 
stir dissension in the breast of a philosopher or 
wake revenge in the soul of a thinker. Again. 
The Roman supported institutions for the heal- 
ing of wounded soldiers and the cure of sick 
slaves; but the ladder on which he descended 
was the spirit of self-interest. He wanted to 
preserve his property. If the soldier had the 
prospect of life in him, he might again serve 
his country ; if the slave gave hope of recovery, 
he might again serve his master. The hospitals 
of that old world were not homes for the good 
of the sufferer; they were homes for the good 
of the healthy. They were intended to recruit 
the sinews of war for the leaders of armies; 
they were designed to recoup the resources of 
wealth for the masters of households. Do I 
speak this to their blame? Assuredly not. It 
was an aim legitimate and right. But it was not 
the vision which Nathanael was to see. It 
was not a descent on the steps of the Son of 
Man. In fact, man had nothing to do with it; 
he was the one factor absent from human calcu- 
lation. Nobody took into account that he was 



NATHANAEL THE INVIGORATED 83 

lying on a bed of pain; nobody asked whether 
his suffering could be mitigated. The one ques- 
tion was, Could it be cured ? — could he be made 
available for the economy of the state or the econ- 
omy of the domestic hearth? If he could, the 
gates of the infirmary were thrown open to him ; 
if he could not, he had the fate of the man at 
the Pool of Bethesda — he could not get in. 

Now, Nathanael's vision was to be very dif- 
ferent from this. The difference lay in the me- 
dium of descent. Rome stooped from her 
proud altitude to bind the wounds of the sufferer ; 
but the ladder on which she came was not the 
ladder of Jacob — she descended on the steps of 
self-interest. But the steps of the Son of Man 
led in the opposite way. There was no thought 
of self, no thought of personal damage, no thought 
of lost service. There was only one thought 
— that a human form was being mutilated, that 
a human heart was feeling sad. Even the possi- 
bility of recovery was not the boundary-line of 
sympathy. Man' s physical care was to go beyond 
his physical hope. It was to take up the incur- 
ables. It was to provide a home for those who 



84 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

would serve no more, would fight no more, 
would be citizens of their country no more. 
It was to prepare for them a new citizenship — 
a place where they could abide under the shad- 
ow of the Almighty and render obedience, not 
in serving, but in waiting. This was the spec- 
tacle which in the days to come was to greet 
the eyes of Nathanael. And the strange thing 
is that the ground of this compassion for human 
suffering was not the insignificance but the great- 
ness of man. Not because he was a poor, help- 
less creature shaken by every wind and at the 
mercy of every circumstance was man's benevo- 
lence to be evoked for man. Rather was charity 
to be elicited by the fact that above the manger 
there was a star, that in company with the weary 
night-vigils there were choirs of celestial song, 
that, lying beside the impotence of the babe, 
there were gold and frankincense and myrrh 
that told of a coming glory. 

Before taking leave of Nathanael there is one 
thing I should like to say. Christian writers, 
as a rule, have been eager to include his name 
in the list of the twelve apostles — they have 



NATHANAEL THE INVIGORATED 85 

tried to identify him with Bartholomew. It has 
seemed to them that one so early called must 
have been an apostle. In that view I cannot con- 
cur. I do not think Nathanael was an apostle. 
I believe the Fourth Gospel had for one of its 
designs just to show that men could get close to 
Jesus without any official position. Look at its 
very keynote! — ^*As many as received Him, to 
them gave He power to become the sons of God, 
even to them that believe on His name. ' That 
keynote seeks to show that on the wings of in- 
ward faith, whose beating is inaudible even to 
the bystander, the humblest soul may soar direct 
into the heart of the Master. Accordingly, this 
Gospel has a record regarding Christians else- 
where unnamed or undwelt on — Nathanael, Nico- 
demus, Martha, Mary, Lazarus. Every one of 
them was brought as near to Jesus as any apostle 
of the band. Nathanael saw His glory ; Nico- 
demus buried Him ; Mary anointed Him ; Martha 
reasoned with Him; Lazarus rose with Him 
in resurrection life. To be in such a company 
was worth all the privileges of the twelve. 



86 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

SON of Man, they tell me that Thy crown has 
faded. They are wrong; it was never so 
bright as now. To Thee there was ever but 
one crown — Charity ; to this end wert Thou bom 
and for this cause earnest Thou into the world. 
Men have mistaken the nature of Thy glory. 
Like Nathanael, they have seen Thy lustre in 
a bauble ; and when the bauble has broken they 
have said that Thou hast faded. But in truth 
Thou hast had to wait for Thy glory, O Christ ; 
it is only fully in sight now. Charity is the 
youngest-bom child of Thy Father. There 
have been days of prophecy, days of eloquence, 
days of doctrine, days of creed and confession; 
but charity was still a child. It is but yesterday 
that we have begun to descend on Thy steps ; but 
at last the dawn is breaking! Above the creed 
there has sounded the cry — the cry of wounded 
humanity. We used to ask how we were to as- 
cend with Thee to heaven ; we are now inquiring 
how we are to descend with Thee to earth. We 
cannot get deep enough down until we get into 
Thy chariot; our brother's rags are too loath- 
some to us till we have sight of Thee, But 



NATHANAEL THE INVIGORATED 87 

Thou hast heightened my helpfulness by height- 
ening my standard of man. It is not pity that 
I need; it is praise. It is not tears that I 
need; it is triumph. It is not heaviness that I 
need ; it is hope. Others can show me the vile 
raiment of the prodigal; Thou pointest to the 
robe that is awaiting him. Others can tell me 
he is despised; Thy look follows him afar off. 
Others with a passing tear can leave him among 
the swine; Thou preparest for him the music 
in the house of the Father. Take us into Thy 
descending chariot, O Son of Man ! 



CHAPTER V 

PETER THE EMBOLDENED 

There is no figure in the New Testament 
Gallery which presents to the eye such a mix- 
ture of simplicity and enigma as that of Simon 
Peter. To outward appearance his character 
may be read on the surface. He is not a theolo- 
gian like John the Baptist; he is not a mystic 
like John the Evangelist; he is a plain, blunt 
man that speaks the language of the common day 
and breathes the wants of the passing hour. 
He is more like an open book than is any other 
figure in the Gallery. We feel that we have met 
him often, that we shall meet him many times 
again. He is one of those men who on a super- 
ficial view promise to offer a very easy sub- 
ject of study. And yet the promise is a delusion. 
Among the spectators of that Gallery there has 

been probably more disagreement about the char- 
88 



PETER THE EMBOLDENED 89 

acter of Simon Peter than about the character 
of any other representative of New Testament 
life. It very often happens that the men and 
women we meet in this world who seem most 
open and above-board are precisely those who 
prove the most difficult to read. Simon Peter 
is one of these. He not only seems, but he 
is, above-board. There is nothing sinister, 
nothing secret, nothing underhand; his words 
and deeds convey exactly the meaning he in- 
tends them to convey. Yet at the close of our 
inspection we find ourselves entangled in what 
appears to be a web of inconsistencies from 
which there is no hope of extrication. We 
seem to be confronted by a life of opposing 
qualities — sometimes touching the heavens, at 
others coming perilously near the nether world 
— ^now in the heights of ecstasy, anon in the 
depths of despair — to-day winning our admira- 
tion, to-morrow exciting a feeling akin to re- 
pulsion. The life, in fact, alternates between 
cowardice and bravery. These are the poles be- 
twixt which he wavers. Every great thing he 
does comes from a moment of bravery; every 



90 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

mean act to which he stoops comes from a mo- 
ment of cowardice. The most cursory examina- 
tion will make this clear. 

The symbol of his whole life is the sea-walk- 
ing. That is in miniature the picture of his en- 
tire character. We see him for an instant on the 
top of the wave, daring a deed which none of his 
compeers could have dared; the next he is 
shrieking with abject terror, 'Lord, save me!' 
And the picture gives no outward cause for this. 
We see no increase of the storm. The wind has 
not heightened; the waves have not swollen; 
the sea does not look more scowling than when 
he planted his foot upon its bosom. It is a 
struggle pure and simple between bravery in his 
own breast and cowardice in his own breast. 
And this picture, as I have said, is the keynote to 
every incident of his life. He makes professions 
of loyalty to Jesus far beyond those of his breth- 
ren; in an hour of real danger he shows the 
courage to maintain them — he draws a sword 
in the garden against heavy odds. Yet within 
a few hours this man quails before the question 
of a servant-girl, and denies the Lord whom he 



PETER THE EMBOLDENED 91 

loves! I see again no adequate cause for the 
change; it must have come from a tremor in 
his own soul. Once more. He was one of the 
first to recognise the claims of the Gentiles. 
Bravely did he stand forth as the champion of 
Gentile freedom at a time when the thought 
was exciting deep animosities. For ventilating 
that thought Stephen had paid the penalty with 
his life. For ventilating that thought the con- 
vert Paul had been forced to retire into tempo- 
rary exile. It was at such a moment that Peter's 
voice was raised in courageous vindication of a 
universal Gospel. Yet, within a few brief years, 
this same man goes down to Antioch, and in 
the face of far less danger keeps aloof from the 
Gentile converts! Again I say I fail to recog- 
nise an adequate outward cause for the change. 
The cause, whatever it is, is within the man. 
His soul is a battlefield between bravery and 
cowardice; and here contend for the mastery 
of his heart the two most opposite things in life 
— the heroism of the soldier and the abjectness 
of the poltroon. 

Here, then, is a subject for the psychologist. 



92 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

We want to know why it was that within the 
soul pf this man there could dwell such con- 
flicting elements. We can understand a mix- 
ture of doubt and faith, we can imagine a union 
of weakness and strength, we can comprehend 
the existence of a natural placidness side by 
side with the possibility of flashing fire; but 
the co-existence of bravery and cowardice, the 
union of the hero and the faint-heart — that is 
something which challenges the philosopher and 
calls for explanation. 

Let me begin by giving the popular expla- 
nation. It is this : * Peter is set forth as an ex- 
ample of the principle, " Let him that thinketh 
he standeth take heed lest he fall. " He is a mon- 
ument of the fact that men are liable to fail in 
their strongest qualities unless periodically re- 
newed by Divine Grace. Peter was by nature a 
brave man. He possessed a soul of fire which 
made him forget his own limitations, which drove 
him instantaneously into work beyond his power. 
He lived by confidence in his own strength, and 
he overrated his own strength. He was one 
of those men to whom preliminary success is 



PETER THE EMBOLDENED 93 

necessary. If his first charge were successful, 
he would carry all before him. But if checked 
in the assault, he would sink suddenly, utterly, 
ignominiously. All his courage would desert 
him. A great reaction would come, in which the 
once powerful heart would become prostrate, in 
which the spirit ready to dare all things would 
bow itself to the dust — conveying the moral to 
all self-confident souls that the highest human 
gift needs to be supported from above.* 

Now, without for a moment disputing the truth 
of the moral, this is not my view of the character 
of Simon Peter as delineated in the Gospel Gal- 
lery. I must repeat that this Gallery is a record 
of transformations, in which each man passes 
from a lower into a higher self. But the view 
here adduced would make Peter's higher self the 
original element and his later self the decline. 
The whole picture, as I take it, is based upon an 
opposite conception. Instead of being by na- 
ture the courageous man we portray, the Peter 
of the Gallery is introduced to us as a man of 
extreme timidity — one of those trembling, shrink- 
ing souls that suggest rather the girl than the 



94 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

youth. We shall go wrong, in my opinion, if 
we do not start from this basis. I admit that 
we are dealing with an inconsistent character; 
but let us not mistake the nature of the incon- 
sistency. The inconsistency of Peter lies in 
his strength and not in his weakness. The in- 
consistency is the Divine thing about him — 
the thing that brings him nearest to his Mas- 
ter. It Hes not in the fact that a brave man 
periodically becomes a coward, but that a cow- 
ardly man periodically becomes brave. It is as 
if a miser were suddenly to give an enormous 
subscription to a charitable institution; the 
subscription, and not the miserliness, is the 
thing to be accounted for. Our wonder should 
begin, not where Peter sinks, but where he 
stands upon the wave — not where he denies his 
Lord, but where he vows to die with Him. To 
take such a view is not only more consonant with 
the picture, it is really more just to Peter. It 
places his character on a higher level. To fall 
from an original eminence implies a moral stain ; 
but to rise to a height which you have not yet 
acquired the adequate strength to maintain — 



d 



PETER THE EMBOLDENED 95 

this is but a sign of weakness, and ought to be 
a ground of sympathy. 

From this point of view I should be disposed 
to divide the Hfe of Peter into three periods. 
The first is the time when timidity reigns su- 
preme. The second is the stage in which there 
begins a struggle between timidity and a new 
principle — courage. The third is that period 
in which the new principle vanquishes the old 
and courage becomes the dominant note of his 
life. 

First, then. Peter originally appears in an 
attitude of constitutional timidity. You say. 
Was he not a fisherman — one who is supposed 
to buffet the winds and the waves and look with 
scorn upon the elements of danger ! Yes ; and 
has it never struck you with surprise that the 
earliest instance of timidity we meet in the Gos- 
pels is just among Christ's Httle band of fisher- 
men — of whom Peter was one! I have often 
marvelled that when that squall burst upon t^e 
bark on the Sea of Galilee these men manifested 
such abject trepidation. Fancy a company of 
English sailors overtaken by a sudden gale 



96 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

and giving vent to their feelings in a simulta- 
neous shriek of terror — *Save us, we perish!' 
But it is precisely such a fancy that explains 
the mystery. For, these men are not English; 
they are at the opposite remove from the Eng- 
lishman. The fishermen of England, the mar- 
iners of England, the very tourists of England, 
have become so endeared to the sea that even 
its storms bring a sense of exhilaration. But 
to the son of Judah the sea was always a horror. 
Jonah was no exceptional case when he ran to sea 
to escape the presence of the Lord God. It 
was to all his countrymen the one region where 
the presence of the Lord God could not be traced. 
Although the exigencies of daily life demanded 
from the men of Galilee the prevalence of the 
fisherman's calling, I do not think it was for them 
a voluntary profession. I think the fishermen 
were the most timid set of the community — 
as the shepherds were the bravest. I have no 
doubt they went out into the deep with fear and 
trembling, inquired anxiously the signs of the 
sky, experienced during the voyage all the palpi- 
tations of the shrinking heart, and thanked God 



PETER THE EMBOLDENED 97 

fervently when they encountered no gale. *We 
have left all, and followed Thee,' said Peter to 
the Lord, speaking for himself and his fellow- 
fishermen. But in truth neither he nor they had 
made any sacrifice. They were very glad to get 
rid of their calling on the chance of something 
else. That * something else' was precarious; 
but the sea was more precarious still. We 
err if we imagine that these men left a comfort- 
able living. They left a struggling, and, to their 
mind, a dangerous mode of subsistence — a life 
which heredity had made full of unpleasant asso- 
ciations, and which the national instinct shrank 
from. It is written of Christ that He once 'con- 
strained His disciples to get into a ship ' ; that 
is what life's struggle always did to the men of 
Galilee. 

Peter carried his lack of courage into the 
kingdom. He left his boat behind him, but he 
left not behind him his timidity. Christ took 
men into His kingdom with their old garments 
on; the ring and the robe were an after-consid- 
eration. He let them come with all the elements 

of their imperfection clinging round them — ^with 

7 



98 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

the hand unringed, with the feet unshod, with the 
vesture unadorned. Within His holy temple the 
votaries again and again revealed traces of old 
culture — the remains of a former day. There are 
incidents in Peter's life which are commonly at- 
tributed to bold presumption, but which, to my 
mind, suggest only the survival of this primi- 
tive culture — the spirit of extreme timidity. 
Take that memorable occasion on which the Mas- 
ter broke to His disciples the tidings of His 
approaching death and when Peter exclaimed 
with hot repudiation, *Be it far from Thee, 
Lord ; this will not be unto Thee ! ' It is com- 
monly set down to his impertinent forwardness. 
I think it was the voice of shrinking fear. No 
doubt devotion to Jesus counted for something; 
but they were all devoted as well as Peter. 
We have to find a reason why Peter was the 
spokesman. And I think that reason lay, 
not in his being the most impertinent, but in 
his being the most timid. He shrank from the 
thought of danger. He sought to figure a bright- 
er destiny. With a sailor's superstition, he cried 
out against the omen as if he would avert it, 



PETER THE EMBOLDENED 99 

bear it down. He is an object rather for 
compassion than for recrimination. Will it be 
said that the sternness of Christ's reproof, *Get 
thee behind me, Satan ! ' is at variance with such 
a view.? But to whom was that reproof admin- 
istered? To Peter.? No — to Satan — to the 
tempter of the wilderness. We are told that 
after the temptation Satan left Him *for a sea- 
son.' This implies that he was to come back. 
He had come back now, and he had come back 
with the old temptation — to reject the cross for 
the crown, to choose the purple instead of the 
poverty, to sway by law in place of stooping 
by love. It was not to Peter that Christ ad- 
ministered the rebuke. It was not Peter that 
He saw before Him; it was the tempter once 
more — that tempter whom He had already sim- 
ilarly and summarily dismissed. The disciple 
who had just been commended for having a 
revelation which flesh and blood had not com- 
municated would never have been addressed by 
the name of * Satan ' ! 

There is another incident commonly attributed 
to the presumption of Peter which I think has 



loo THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

its source in his timidity. I allude to that mo- 
ment on the Mount of Transfiguration when he 
exclaimed, * Methinks it is good to be here ; and 
let us make three tabernacles — one for Thee and 
one for Moses and one for Elias!' The dicta- 
tion of a plan to Jesus is startling enough; but 
I think it was really a cry of fear. The refrain 
of that death-prophecy was still ringing in his 
ears. He attributed to Jesus the dream of a 
Messianic conquest. He thought, if that dream 
could be dispelled, the death and danger prefig- 
ured would melt away. If, instead of battling 
with the rude world, the Son of Man would pitch 
His tabernacle on a height, if He would estab- 
lish His seat on the top of the mountain far 
from the din and strife of men, if He would sit 
there till suppliants came to Him and descend 
not Himself into the lists of human competi- 
tion, it seemed to Peter that the new regime 
would cease to be one of storm and stress, of 
difficulty and danger, of sorrow and sacrifice, 
but would become a haven of peace, a home of 
tranquillity, a place where body and soul could 
alike find repose. It was his constitutional 



PETER THE EMBOLDENED loi 

shrinking from peril that made him wish to re- 
main on the hill. 

But, all this time, there was growing up in 
Simon Peter a new and higher life. Even 
amid the survivals of his old culture the second 
stage of his spiritual history had already opened. 
That second period is one of struggle — the 
struggle between the original timidity and a 
new principle which stimulated to courage. 
Jacob had begun to wrestle with his angel and, 
though baffled oft, had refused to let him go. 
Whence came this element of bravery.-* It was 
born of love. There is no mystery about it ; you 
may see the same thing every day. I have 
seen a soul of extraordinary timidity kindled into 
a courage which Caesar might have envied; 
the fire came from love. One who all through 
life had shrunk from the slightest hint of danger 
I have known to rush into a burning house to 
save her infant from the flames. And yet it 
does not follow that at this moment the consti- 
tutional timidity was dead. The rain may still 
fall when the sun is shining. Doubtless, where 
the element of love was absent, this woman would 



I02 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

for many a day subside into her old cowardice 
in the ordinary trifles of life, and to the eye of 
friends and companions would reveal no spiritual 
change. None the less the spiritual change would 
be there, and sooner or later it would leaven the 
whole nature; for love to one creates love to 
all, and the courage inspired by my single pure 
affection will at last become my courage for 
every danger of my brother-man. 

Now, there had come to Peter one great love. 
He had met with a life which peculiarly domi- 
nated him. It dominated him by stilling him, 
calming him. The very timidity of Peter made 
Christ to him a special rest; in that tabernacle 
his trembling spirit could repose. And in his 
devotion to Jesus he had moments of a new ex- 
perience — courage. At first it came only in 
thought. He fought battles for Christ in the im- 
agination, stood with Him in vision on the stormy 
sea, died with Him in the realms of fancy. 
Let no one say that this profited nothing. All 
virtue, all vice, begins in thinking. The man 
who has fought a successful moral battle in his 
imagination, is already more than half vie- 



PETER THE EMBOLDENED 103 

torious, for it is in imagination that 5ln looks 
brightest and virtue seems most hard to win. 
He may fail betimes in the actual struggle; 
fancy may drop her lamp for a moment; he 
may turn his eyes from the Christ to the sea and 
the winds raging. But let him faint not. 
Success is coming. The battle in the soul is 
the real test. The victory in fancy has guar- 
anteed the triumph in fact; and he who has 
conquered in the spirit will not long be worsted 
in the flesh. 

There came to Simon Peter such a time of ab- 
solute victory. There came a time when the 
struggle with his angel ceased and when he 
glowed in the unclouded sun of Peniel. The final 
stage of his spiritual experience is that of un- 
broken courage. Timidity vanishes altogether, 
and in its room there comes a calm and habitual 
fearlessness — not the spasmodic burst of con- 
fidence which marked his earliest days, but a 
fixed and abiding bravery pervading all his life 
and directing all his way. 

How do we know that this was the final stage 
of Simon Peter.? Because we have in our pos- 



I04 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

session a letter written in his mature life which 
embodies precisely this spirit. I think the let- 
ters of the New Testament have each a special 
characteristic, a quality which distinguishes them 
from beginning to end. The Epistle to the Ro- 
mans has the quality of reasoning. The Epistle 
to the Galatians is a letter of self-defence. The 
Epistle to the Ephesians is a eulogy on Christ's 
imperialism. The Epistle to the Philippians is 
in praise of Christian sacrifice. The Epistles to 
Timothy are a note of exhortation. The Epistles 
of John are calls to brotherhood. The Epis- 
tle of James is a plea for practical religion. 
What is the Epistle of Peter ? — I mean his first, 
or more undisputed, epistle. What is its char- 
acteristic ? Can we put our hand upon any chord 
which pervades all its utterances.? I think we 
can. To my mind there is one theme which 
runs through this letter as clearly as an air runs 
through the variations in a piece of music. That 
theme is courage. Peter has taken for his 
subject the counterpart of his former self. 
More than any document of the New Testament 
this letter is the Epistle of Courage. Other things 



PETER THE EMBOLDENED 105 

are accidental; this is its essence, its glory, its 
crown. In every note, in every bar, in every ca- 
dence, we find the man stepping over his dead self 
and revealing the newness of life ; the Peter on the 
top of the wave looks down upon the Peter sink- 
ing in the depths and cries, * You were wrong ! ' 
The very first key struck is one of reversal, 

* Blessed be God, who has begotten us into a 
lively hope' — a hope pervading the life — not 
coming periodically in fits and starts, but tak- 
ing up its abode within the soul. Listen again ! 
— *We are redeemed by the precious blood of 
Christ as of a lamb without blemish and with- 
out spot. ' Where is now the rebuke, * Be it far 
from Thee, Lord ; this shall not be unto Thee ' ! 
— the thing from which he recoiled has become 

* precious.' Again — *The God of all grace, 
after ye have suffered awhile, make you perfect, 
stablish, strengthen, settle you.' What a com- 
ment on his own experience! To be no longer 
spasmodic, fitful, wayward, but * stablished, ' 

* settled ' — it was the realisation of all his wants, 
and therefore it seemed to him the crown of all 
perfection. And then, notice the boldness of the 



io6 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

wish that we should not be made perfect till 
after we have * suffered awhile ' ! What a note of 
autobiography is here ! Where is now the call for 
the three tabernacles that he might be free, 
from the troubles of the plain! To him in his 
retrospect these troubles have become the glo- 
rious things. It is the ' trial of faith ' which 
he declares to be *more precious than gold.' 
In looking back he has such a reverence for 
the crosses of his life that he would not value 
perfection without them. The suffering is to 
him part of the privilege — * Count it all joy ! ' 
he cries. He claims the cloud as essential to the 
clearness, the night as instrumental to the noon. 
The evening and not the morning is Peter's 
golden hour. The morning was leaden and 
grey; the evening is light and glorious. The 
morning made faint with fear; the evening 
makes strong with sanguineness. The morn- 
ing saw his spirit crouch in a coward's lair; 
the evening leads him forth to dwell in the path 
of danger. The motto of his maturity is this: 
* Forasmuch as Christ has suffered in the flesh, 
arm yourselves also with the same mind. ' 



PETER THE EMBOLDENED 107 

1 THANK Thee, O Lord, that there is wait- 
ing for each of us a courage in reserve. 
This man when he started was quite unfit for 
the work that lay before him ; he had not nerve 
to face Hfe's storm. But it all came — came 
with the day and with the hour ; it was reserved 
in heaven till the crisis moment. I too, Lord, 
am unfit for the struggle of life; if I attempt to 
walk upon its sea I shall inevitably sink and per- 
ish. I have not the courage to contemplate the 
winds and the waves; I am tempted to fly to 
the mountain and build a tabernacle there. But 
in the light of this man's experience I will not. 
What know I but that my courage may be sleep- 
ing beside the sea, waiting till I come up and 
claim it! What know I but that my treasure 
may be hid in the very field which seems so deso- 
late and lonely! Hast Thou not said even of 
Thyself, * My hour is not yet come ' 1 I may 
bear a cross on Friday which I could not have 
borne on the past Monday. If I cannot bear it 
on Monday shall I say to my soul, ' Flee as a 
bird to your mountain ' ! Nay, my Christ, for 
there may be potent powers of courage sleeping 



io8 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

in the folds of Friday. There are angels in the 
wilderness who only show themselves in the 
fasting hour. There are angels in Gethsemane 
who only reveal themselves amid my crying 
and tears. Shall I wait for the breaking of the 
cloud before I face the rain ! Nay, for my char- 
iot may be in the cloud. I shall come with- 
out strength to the storm; I shall go without 
weapons to the wilderness; I shall repair 
without guarantee to the Garden; I shall jour- 
ney without courage to the Cross. My shin- 
ing will come with the shadow; my power will 
wake with the pain; my courage will rise with 
the conflict ; my fortitude will dawn with the fire ; 
my nerve will be strengthened with the need; 
my resource will be ready with the rain-cloud; 
my boldness will be born with the breeze. I 
shall walk with Thee by faith till the fulness of 
the time. 



CHAPTER VI 

NICODEMUS THE INSTRUCTED 

I AM glad that among' the figures of the New 
Testament Gallery there is a place assigned to 
the student. Great as is our satisfaction to see 
an acknowledgment of life's practical callings, 
there would, I think, have been an omission if 
there had been no portrayal of the intellectual 
struggles of the soul. There is such a portray- 
al. It appears in the portrait of Nicodemus. 
He is distinctively the man of study — the man of 
the night-lamp. I do not mean that he repre- 
sents exclusively the life of the university. The 
student is limited to no calling. He may be a 
fisherman like Peter or a tax-gatherer like 
Matthew or a tentmaker like Paul. Student 
life is not a profession; it is a state of mind. 
There are very few of us who have not moments 

of the night-lamp — times when we sit down and 
^09 



no THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

ponder on the mysteries by which we are sur- 
rounded. Even the fooHsh virgins have their 
lamps — seasons when the seriousness of life 
breaks through the crust of frivolity and makes 
them ask the questions which are habitual to 
the wise. The satisfactory thing about the 
portraying of Nicodemus is not that it recognises 
a particular profession, but that it recognises 
a secret moment of every human heart. It 
lifts the veil from the innermost life of all men 
and women, and gives us a glimpse into that sa- 
cred shrine which, after all, is the noblest part 
of man. 

In this picture of Nicodemus there are ex- 
hibited three phases of the student mind; one 
of them is good, the other two need correc- 
tion. We glance at each of these. We begin 
with that which I have called good. It is the 
tendency expressed in the saying that Nico- 
demus ' came to Jesus by night. ' I am aware 
this is commonly recorded to his blame; it is 
attributed to cowardice. I do not think this 
is the idea. I think the idea is, he was so 
eager that he could not wait till the morning. 



NICODEMUS THE INSTRUCTED iii 

And I feel sure that the Fourth Evangelist 
has made the historical fact a grand symbol both 
of the man Nicodemus and of the student life 
in general. Nicodemus waits not for light to 
illumine his way. He comes in a thick fog 
— groping, stumbling. The portrait, in evi- 
dent support of the metaphor, introduces him 
in an attitude of deplorable ignorance; he has 
come to Christ, lighted by a single star. And 
in this the picture symbolises the initial stage of 
all inquiry. To every form of truth the student 
must come by night; he must accept evidence 
which is less than demonstration. People talk 
as if Christianity were in this an exceptional 
thing ; they see in its demand for faith an ignor- 
ing of the claims of science. But every scien- 
tific theory makes the same demand. When 
Darwin ventilated the doctrine of Evolution, he 
did not say it had been proved. What he did 
say in effect was this: *I have found a key 
which can unlock many of the doors of this 
universe. It is perhaps the key which is meant 
to unlock all the doors. I will try. Encour- 
aged by the cases I have established, I shall 



112 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

start by an act of faith. I shall assume that this 
is the one key to the kingdom of Nature. I 
shall apply it to the many locks as I have ap- 
plied it to the few. It may become Aladdin's 
lamp to me — may open the secrets of creation 
and unbar the gates of mystery. I shall not 
wait to exhaust the facts before I form the 
theory; I shall begin wdth the theory and try 
if it will fit the facts. I shall be content to 
approach the Temple of Nature with only a 
night-lamp in my hand; I shall not linger for 
the dawn. * 

And this is the true source of all discovery 
in every department of life. Take life itself. 
With what a ver)^ small amount of light we set 
out to face the world I We come to it with cer- 
tain theories in our mind — some gathered from 
stray testimonies, some derived from the read- 
ing of romances. And yet with this slender 
equipment we go forth into the dark, not only 
without trembling, but full of the most ardent 
hope — ^hope which in the large majority of 
cases becomes the very key which opens to us 
the door. But it is in the sphere of knowledge 



NICODEMUS THE INSTRUCTED 113 

that the principle is most conspicuously, most 
trenchantly true, and specially in that sphere 
which we call the knowledge of God. To a 
mind encompassed with doubts of a Divine 
Presence in the world I would say: * Follow 
the method which originated the doctrine of 
Evolution. Start with God as a working hy- 
pothesis. Do not search for Him in the uni- 
verse, but search the universe through Him. 
Begin by assuming Him. Say, I have found in 
Him a key which fits several locks; I want to 
try it on the other locks. Let your coming be 
by night — the night of faith. Do not wait till 
the shadows have cleared away and the un- 
clouded Divine glory is revealed. Approach 
the universe with a theory — the theory that 
there is a God. Try the doors with that theory 
and see if they will open. You will be sur- 
prised at your success. You will have as many 
trophies as the doctrine of Evolution — nay, 
this theory will explain Evolution itself and 
make it intelligible to all men. ' There is no at- 
titude of mind so seemly in the student, there 

is no search for knowledge at once so scientific 
8 



114 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

and so reverent, as that which permits faith 
to precede full enlightenment — which allows 
man to come by night. 

This brings me to the second phase to which 
the mind of the student is subject. I mean 
the tendency to sink his own individuality in 
the life of the race, or what he calls the spirit 
of the age. This appears very prominently in 
the case of Nicodemus. Other men when they 
come into the presence of Jesus address Him 
as individual suppliants ; they say, * Have 
mercy upon me!' But this man enters into 
Christ's presence with quite a unique mode of 
address. He accosts Him as if he were speak- 
ing in the name of a corporation, as if he had 
been deputed to carry a request from a pub- 
lic body — * Master, we know that Thou art 
a teacher come from God.' Here again the 
popular view is that he is influenced by fear 
— the wish not to commit himself to a personal 
opinion regarding Christ. My own view is that 
he is influenced purely by pride — the pride char- 
acteristic of the inquirer. One of the deep- 
est desires of every student is to be thought a 



IV IS 



NICODEMUS THE INSTRUCTED 115 

child of his age — up to date, as the phrase goes. 
It is a great mistake to think that the tendency 
of intellectual youth is personal independence. 
Its tendency is the opposite — the identifying 
of personal opinion with the view current among 
the highest minds. To obtain the reputation of 
this identity, to be called a true son of the 
time, the inquirer is content to sacrifice origi- 
nality. He delights to repeat the opinions of 
the scientific, to quote their names, to air their 
views; he begins all things with the formula, 
* We know. * 

Now, this is the position in which I would 
place Nicodemus. However ignorant he him- 
self was, he belonged to a guild which was re- 
garded as the repository of Jewish learning. 
With the opinions of that guild he was eager 
to identify himself. He did not wish to be 
thought peculiar, eccentric. He had no desire 
that his coming to Christ should be interpreted 
as a mental aberration. He was eager to 
make it clear that he was saying nothing which 
the Pharisaic party might not thoroughly en- 
dorse. His address is virtually a proposal of 



ii6 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

terms — ^a statement of the conditions on which 
he and his countrymen would be willing to 
accept Jesus. 

You will observe, Jesus resents this corpo- 
rate mode of address on the part of Nicodemus. 
I used to wonder why, midway in His speech. 
He addresses Nicodemus as if he were, not 
one man, but a whole company of men — says 
* ye ' instead of * thou. ' But the reason has be- 
come clear. Nicodemus has spoken to Jesus 
as if he were a collective body of men; Jesus 
answers him as if he were a collective body 
of men. More striking still is the fact that in 
His answer Jesus also assumes a collective 
capacity: * Verily, verily, I say unto thee. We 
speak what we do know and testify what we 
have seen, and ye receive not our witness. ' It 
is the only instance I know in the whole New 
Testament in which our Lord speaks of Him- 
self in the plural number. He says on one oc- 
casion, * If a man love Me^ My Father will love 
hiniy and We shall come and take up our abode 
with him'; but He is there speaking of two 
— Himself and His Father. Here He speaks 



NICODEMUS THE INSTRUCTED 117 

in His own person, but He uses the editorial 
*we/ Can any man fail to see why! It is a 
fine piece of repartee. Nicodemus has identi- 
fied himself with his comrades; Christ identi- 
fies Himself with His followers. Nicodemus 
has appealed to the spirit of an earthly age; 
Christ appeals to the spirit of the ages in heaven, 
to the mode of thinking which prevails in the 
upper sanctuary, to the fashion of a world which 
will not pass away. 

And let us remember that Christ has here 
put His hand upon a real weakness of Nico- 
demus and those whom he represents. For 
this original tendency of student life is one which 
needs to be corrected. Specially does it need to 
be corrected in the religious sphere — the sphere 
of Nicodemus. The man engaged in a study of 
God must beware, above all things, of losing 
himself in the crowd. To him at that moment 
there is opening a stage of tremendous solem- 
nity — the sense of individual responsibiUty. 
In the presence of that thought he should see 
the whole multitude go out and leave him, 
alone. The spirit of the age should count for 



ii8 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

nothing, except so far as it corroborates his 
own. At that moment, and for that moment, 
he should feel himself the only man in the 
world, standing before the most august of all 
problems, and bound to give an answer from 
the depths of his own soul. Nicodemus was 
confronting one who had come to reveal this 
fact of individual responsibility. Nicodemus 
himself had belonged to another regime. The 
adherents of the Jewish faith had uniformly 
merged the individual in the race. The man 
only existed for the sake of the nation. It 
was to her that the promises were addressed; 
it was to her that the warnings were offered. 
The motto of every son of Israel was, * My life 
is my country.' In the interest of that country 
he was to lose himself, in the fate of that coun- 
try he was to sink himself. The personal life 
was to be absorbed in the patriotic; the indi- 
vidual being was to be blended with the exist- 
ence of the commonwealth. Judaism was essen- 
tially a national religion — the man worshipped 
as a part of the nation. There was some excuse 
for Nicodemus saying, ' We know. ' But Je- 



NICODEMUS THE INSTRUCTED 119 

sus was to introduce a new regime. He was to 
tell the world that in matters of faith every 
man was to God a kingdom. He was to pro- 
claim that the individual and not the natiori 
was now to bulk largest in his sight. He wai 
to proclaim that the Jewish nation would pasji 
away, but that the man would endure foi 
ever. He was to proclaim that the individual 
in his hour of religious contemplation ought to 
separate himself sharply from his environment. 
He was to bid him enter into his silent room and 
shut the door and pray to his Father in secret 
— as if in all the universe there were none other 
than they two. The spirit of the age was to 
be forgotten. His fellow-men were to be re- 
membered in his sympathy, but were to have 
no influence on his example. He was to feel 
himself alone — alone with the great problem of 
eternity, alone with the presence of God. X, 

Nicodemus learned in this interview with 
Jesus the value of an individual soul, the ne- 
cessity that it should be lifted into a higher life 
and bom into a world which was independent 
of Jewish heredity. How do we know that he 



I20 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN ' 

learned it? Because we have a record on the 
subject. This man appears before us at a later 
date and reveals himself in a new attitude. In 
the interval the atmosphere has changed. Je- 
sus is no longer the object of a kindly and 
somewhat contemptuous patronage on the part 
of the Sanhedrin. That august body has been 
stirred with fear. The movement which at 
first seemed capable of being incorporated 
within its own boundaries has flashed out in 
deadly and irreconcilable antagonism; and the 
Jewish Assembly, which yesterday was ready 
to propose terms of union, is to-day animated 
by only one desire — to crush and annihilate the 
rising system. The Sanhedrin is eager to ar- 
rest Jesus. It had the penetration to perceive 
what many professing Christians have not per- 
ceived — that Christianity is Christ, and that 
to strike at Christianity you must strike at 
Christ. It knew well that the whole force 
of the movement centred in one man, and that 
to slay the one man was to destroy the entire 
army. Accordingly, this supreme court re- 
solves to lay hands on Jesus. But there is one 



NICODEMUS THE INSTRUCTED 121 

dissenting voice — the voice of Nicodemus. It 
is the last voice we should have expected. 
We are disposed to say, * Is this the man who a 
little while ago was eager to sink himself in the 
spirit of the age!* He now stands forth op- 
posed to the age — stands out as a solitary indi- 
vidual breasting the waves of a crowd, and cries 
with fearless love of justice, 'Does our law 
judge any man before it hears him!' We 
marvel at the spectacle. It is not that we see a 
growing stature — we expect time to bring that. 
It is that we witness a transformation. Nico- 
demus has changed his weakness into a strength. 
He has become strong in the very point in which 
he was defective. On the night in which he 
stood before Jesus he was unwilling to be alone; 
on the day in which he stands before the San- 
hedrin he is unwilling to be in company. He 
asserts the right of his own individual soul. 
He is a fine example of the difference between 
what is called nature and what is called grace. 
Nature can improve a man; grace transforms 
him. 

I come now to the third tendency in the life 



122 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

of the inquirer. It is the pride of reason. As 
applied to Christianity it takes the form of 
trying to prove Christ from the outside — ^by 
something not connected with His nature. We 
see this with Nicodemus. He says, * We know 
that Thou art a teacher come from God, for no 
man can do these miracles that Thou doest 
except God be with him.' The answer of 
Christ is striking and graphic — 'Verily, verily, 
I say unto thee, Except a man be born again 
he cannot see the kingdom of God.' The 
words, as I take it, are strongly antithetical. 
Our Lord says : * Nicodemus, you claim to 
have arrived at knowledge. A man makes a 
g^eat profession when he says, I know. There 
is something which must come before knowl- 
edge, and that is sight. Unless a man is bom 
with a special faculty, he cannot even see my 
kingdom — much less understand it. You cannot 
reach the sense of my power by a ladder of 
demonstration — though you should mount for 
ages and ages. But you may reach it in a mo- 
ment, in the twinkling of an eye, if only you 
can find the wings of my spirit. If it come to 



NICODEMUS THE INSTRUCTED 123 

you at all it must come in a flash, in a thrill 
of intuition, in a glance of the soul. It must 
be seetiy not proved; and the man who sees 
it gives evidence that he has been born into a 
world with larger powers than are at the command 
of earth. ' 

We may illustrate the position of Nicodemus 
by one coming to an artist and saying, * I know 
that the city of Edinburgh is beautiful, because, 
if otherwise, every one would not have agreed 
to call it so.' What would the artist reply.? 
Would he not say : * My friend, your testimony 
is absolutely valueless. It adds nothing to the 
weight of Edinburgh's prestige. To have any 
value, your testimony must be founded on sight. 
It must be independent of any other witness. 
You must be convinced by your own vision — 
convinced with equal strength though all other 
witnesses were contrary. You must be able to 
feel that the beauty of Edinburgh to you needs, 
no vindication, that you would deem it as fair 
if all the world contemned it, that it shines to 
you by its own light and holds the evidence of 
its own glory. ' 



124 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

The words of our Lord to Nicodemus have 
often been deemed mystical. I see in them 
neither mysticism nor mystery. Christianity is 
no exception when it says, * He who would know 
me must be bom into my spirit.' There is 
not a study in the world which would not say 
that. Have you ever asked yourself what is the 
first requirement for any study.? A knowledge 
of facts.? That is very essential, but it is not 
the earliest thing. A power of acute reason- 
ing.? That is also very essential, but it comes 
into use still later than the facts. There is 
something behind these, earlier than these, and 
that is the spirit of the study itself. Before a 
man can even begin to inquire, he must ask 
himself. Am I in sympathy with the subject.? 
— that question must precede all investigation 
of facts and all lines of reasoning. It matters 
not what the kingdom be, our first step must 
be made here. Take the kingdom of art. A 
man might buy all the pictures in a gallery, 
might commit to memory their various sub- 
jects, might learn their date and authorship, 
might study the lives of their different painters. 



NICODEMUS THE INSTRUCTED 125 

might even combine the scattered threads of 
his information into a connected narrative em- 
bodying the rational sequence of the artistic 
history; but all this would be only the outside. 
One touch of inward sympathy would make him 
independent of all these things. He could dis- 
pense with historical knowledge. He could 
dispense with financial expenditure. He could 
dispense with efforts of memory. He could feed 
upon a single picture — though he knew not its 
name, though he knew not its author, though 
he could not identify any one of its figures. A 
very small amount of influence from without is 
sufficient to stimulate the spirit. 

Now, the error of Nicodemus was that he 
sought Christ for something on the outside. 
He came to Him for what He wore — that was 
the sting of the position. He was attracted to 
Christ by His miracles. This was to Christ quite 
equivalent to saying, * I love you for the dress 
you wear.* There lies the reason for the stern- 
ness with which He speaks to Nicodemus. If 
Nicodemus had come and said, * Master, I can- 
not believe in your miracles unless I have seen 



126 THE REPRESENTATR^ MEN 

them, but I am already convinced of your Di- 
vine beauty/ Jesus would have received him 
very differently; for the only power He \^ued 
was the power of the spirit, and He felt that 
the power of His spirit was something which 
flesh and blood could not reveal 

But here again Nicodemus has a magnificent 
counterpart. We have seen how grandly the 
previous tendency was reversed, transformed. 
We have seen how the man who clung to the 
fashion of his age became the man who could 
stand to his opinion unbefriended and alone. 
We are now to see a greater transformation stilL 
This man who at the beginning accepted 
Christ's miracles and ignored His Divine beauty 
was able in the end to ignore His miracles and 
accept His beauty ! In the latest recorded scene 
in which he appears before us he comes in a 
deeper and darker night than that in which 
he first sought the Lord. Jesus is dead. All 
the Messianic hopes seem faded in the dust. 
The hosannahs are hushed, the palm-leaves are 
withered, the friends of summer days have 
made their flight in the winter. It was a time 



NICODEMUS THE INSTRUCTED 127 

when, if the first view of Nicodemus had been 
right, God must have deserted Jesus. All 
power had vanished from Him — even the power 
to live. There He lay — shorn of His outward 
beams, denuded of His visible glory, stripped 
of the robe of earthly royalty! And it was 
at this moment that Nicodemus came. He 
came to do homage to the dead, to embalm the 
body of the prostrate Lord. He brought myrrh 
and aloes of a hundred-pound weight — ^far more 
than could possibly be used for the purpose. 
It was like the woman's alabaster box — the 
prodigality of love. And, like the pouring out 
of that ointment, it was an anointing for burial. 
He recognised Christ's majesty in death — this 
man who had begun with the love of the exter- 
nal ! He saw His glory in the night ; he beheld 
His chariot in a cloud; he discerned His king- 
dom under the trappings of the grave! It was 
a grand act, worthy to constitute our last 
glimpse of the man. It was an act, moreover, 
which lends to the picture of Christ's life a 
strange poetic consistency. Twice in that pic- 
ture do we see the myrrh laid at the unconscious 



128 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

feet of Jesus; and both tributes are given by 
inquiring minds. The first offering was laid 
before the infant by the Persian Magi ; the sec- 
ond was made to the dead Christ by the Jew- 
ish Nicodemus. To me there is something beau- 
tiful in the thought that, amid all the selfish 
approaches to Jesus, amid all the crowds that 
sought Him only for what He could bestow, 
there were some who recognised Him in the 
days of His weakness, and paid their tribute to 
a sense of inward beauty. The myrrh presented 
in the manger and the myrrh lavished on Cal- 
vary are the truest embalming of the greatness 
of our Lord. 

TT is Thy death that has embalmed Thee, O 

* Christ. Many things have glonfied^\Y\i^^\ 
but death has embalmed Thee. The myrrh and 
the aloes have remained in Thy sepulchre. No- 
where dost Thou live in memory so bright as in 
the valley of the shadow. In a deeper sense 
than Nicodemus, we come to Thee ' by night. ' 
Not in Thy miracles art Thou embalmed, but 
where Thy miracles have ceased. We have seen 



NICODEMUS THE INSTRUCTED 129 

Thy beauty where the world saw only Thy weak- 
ness; Thou hast survived where men thought 
Thee most unfit. We have brought our crown 
to Thy discrowned brow; we have put our 
trust in Thine unsceptred hand. We have kept 
our spices for Thy grave. We have not scat- 
tered them on Hermon where mighty words 
were spoken; we have not spread them in the 
wilderness where wondrous bread was broken; 
we have not left them on the Transfiguration 
Mount which gave Thee heaven *s token. We 
have passed these by. We have laid the myrrh 
and aloes upon the altar of Thy sacrifice. 
We have brought our faith to Thy seeming fee- 
bleness, our prayer to Thine apparent power- 
lessness. We have drawn courage from Thy 
crucifixion, strength from Thy stripes, wealth 
from Thy wounds, boldness from Thy blood. 
We have seen Thy kingdom in the cloud, Thine 
empire in the embers, Thy power in the unbeat- 
ing pulse. Thy glory in the grave-clothes, Thy 
victory in the hour of vanquishment. Thy des- 
tiny coming from the dust. We pay our trib- 
ute to Thy cross. We lay our myrrh and aloes 



I30 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

where the old world laid its scorn — upon Thy 
broken heart ; but one who once belonged to that 
world meets us at the garden gate and cries, 
* You have done well. ' It is the voice of Nico- 
demus. 



CHAPTER VII 

THOMAS THE CONVINCED 

There are two classes of minds which habitu- 
ally stand in the post of outlook — the man of 
the laurel and the man of the cypress. The 
first sees the world as rose-coloured. It is all 
brightness, all beauty, all glory — a scene of splen- 
did possibilities which is waiting to open for him 
its gates of gold. The second, on the other hand, 
approaches it with dismay. To him the pros- 
pect looks all dark. He is a pessimist previ- 
ous to experience. He is sure he will never suc- 
ceed. He is sure the gate will not open when he 
tries it. He feels that he has nothing to ex- 
pect from life. He hangs his harp upon a wil- 
low, and goes forth to sow in tears. 

And each of these has a representative in the 
New Testament. I think the man of the laurel 

is the evangelist John. From the very begin- 
131 



132 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

ning he is optimistic. Even when Christ was 
on the road to that martyrdom of which He 
had warned His disciples, John is so sanguine 
of success that he applies for a place in the 
coming kingdom. And through life this opti- 
mism does not desert him. His very power to 
stand beside the cross was a power of hope. It 
was not that he excelled his brother-disciples in 
the nerve to bear pain. It was rather that to 
him the spectacle conveyed an impression of 
less pain — that he saw in it elements of triumph 
as well as trial, signs of strength along with 
marks of sacrifice. 

But if the man of the laurel is John, the man 
of the cypress is assuredly Thomas. There are 
men whose melancholy is the result of their 
scepticism; Thomas's scepticism is the result 
of his melancholy. He came to the facts of 
life with an antecedent prejudice; he uniformly 
expected from the banquet an inferior menu. 
It is a great mistake to imagine that the collapse 
came with the Crucifixion. Strictly speaking, 
there was no collapse. If I understand the pic- 
ture aright, it represents the figure of a man 



THOMAS THE CONVINCED 133 

who could never stand at his full stature but 
was always bent towards the ground. It was 
not from timidity. He was a courageous man, 
ready to do and dare anything even when he was 
most downcast. It was not from a mean na- 
ture. He was a man of the noblest spirit — capa- 
ble of the most heroic deeds of sacrifice. That 
which gave him a crouching attitude was simply 
a constitutional want of hope — a natural in- 
ability to take the bright view. It was this 
which made him a sceptic. He was indisposed 
to give anything a trial. When the disciples 
assembled at their first spiritual seance in the 
hope of getting a vision of their risen Lord, he 
refused to attend;^ when told that a vision 
had been given, he refused to believe it. It 
was too good news to be true. He would have 
believed the story of an earthquake or a pesti- 
lence or a shipwreck; but he could not credit 
the earth with the power to witness a scene of 
glory. 

* I think the same religious hopelessness would keep 
him from attending the meeting for silent individual 
prayer in Gethsemane ; I do not believe he was one of 
those who fled that night. 



134 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

Now, the question which arises is this, Why 
is Thomas so leniently treated ? He demands as 
an evidence of the risen Christ that very kind 
of proof which the Pharisees had demanded as 
an evidence of the Divine Christ — a physical 
sign. We know how Christ treated the Phari- 
saic demand, how He had said, * An evil and adul- 
terous generation seeketh after a sign, and there 
shall no sign be given unto it. ' Is it thus that 
our Lord meets Thomas? On the contrary. 
He grants his request — not perhaps without re- 
proach, but certainly without loss of tenderness ; 
He bids him put forth his hand and touch the 
material sign — the print of the nails. There must 
have been something in Thomas which won 
upon Christ, which made the request in his 
case comparatively harmless. What was it } It 
is a question well worthy of our consideration. 
We are familiar with the saying that circum- 
stances alter cases; it is equally true that per- 
sons alter cases. The boon- of a physical sign 
denied to the Jewish nation is granted to a Jew- 
ish individual. There must have been some- 
thing in that individual which to the eye of the 



THOMAS THE CONVINeED 135 

Master changed the complexion of the case and 
rendered it possible to relax the rigidness of the 
rule. 

And a moment's reflection will convince us 
that in the picture of Thomas we have a speci- 
men quite unique in the male section of Christ's 
first hearers — a. figure which must have been 
unique even to Jesus Himself. For consider, 
the natural melancholy of this man made his 
approach to Christ an unselfish one. He ex- 
pected nothing from the world — nothing from 
a world even under the auspices of Christ. 
Yet he came to Christ — spite of this absence 
of physical expectation. Whatever drew him 
to the Master, it could have been nothing ex- 
ternal. Here was something fresh and new. All 
around Him Christ saw men who came on the 
chance of a physical glory. The sign they 
asked was not so much a sign of Christ as a 
sign of their own felicity. Even the circle of 
the apostolic band was pervaded by the hope 
of a physical glory. With some it took the 
form of Messianic conquest; with others, like 
Simon Peter, it assumed the aspect of an earthly 



136 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

Paradise far from the din of men. But what- 
ever form it took, it had always the same es- 
sence — outward reward. The Christ was meas- 
ured by His power to change the present order 
of physical things — to place two ignorant fisher- 
men at the right hand of heaven, to bid the 
stones be turned into bread, to change earth's 
water into plenteous wine, and expand the few 
loaves into food for the million. 

But here is a man who approaches Jesus in 
a totally different attitude. He was a man of 
the cypress — a man to whom the world did not 
present possibilities. I do not say it did not 
present attractions; but where attractions are 
believed to be beyond our reach they have no 
motive power. It is a proverbial saying that an 
infant cries for the moon. But the infant cries 
for the moon because it believes that luminary to 
be within its reach; if it had a contrary belief, 
we are absolutely safe in stating that it would 
not cry. All aspiration is bom of hope. If I 
believe an object to be beyond the stretch of 
my arm, I do not stretch my arm towards it. 
It is equally true with the things of the heart 



THOMAS THE CONVINCED 137 

I do not make an effort to attain that which I 
know to be entirely above me; desire, in such 
cases, is paralysed on the threshold. And 
such I conceive to be the case of Thomas. He 
looked at the world from under his cypress-tree, 
and he pronounced it an impossible world — 
a world whose gates of promotion and whose 
doors of promise were not for him. He had too 
keen a sense of life's difficulties to be impelled 
by any worldly hope in Christ, and therefore 
he never could have joined Christ for any such 
motive. Yet he did join Him. He threw in 
his lot with Jesus and accompanied His train. 
Why? So must have asked the Son of Man 
Himself; and the answer His mind gave must 
have been refreshing in the extreme. Amid 
the many who came to Him for His surround- 
ings, here was one who came to Him for Him- 
self. Christ beheld in Thomas a devotion to 
His person. Had he recognised in the Mas- 
ter some of his own cypress leaves — something 
which prevented Him from having fulness of 
joy } I cannot tell ; but I know that the man of 
depression drew close to the Man of Sorrows, 



138 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

and I feel that the bond between them was 
stronger than any material chain. 

In this portrait of Thomas I think there are 
revealed two things of great significance. We 
see a Christian love in the absence of a Chris- 
tian creed; and we see what is more remark- 
able still — a Christian faith in the absence of 
a Christian creed. Let us look at each of 
these separately. 

And first. Let us take one central incident 
in the portraiture of Thomas. Perhaps if the 
question were asked, What is the most central 
incident in the portraiture of Thomas.^ the 
majority would answer, * The touching of the 
nail-prints.' That is not my opinion. I think 
the circumstance which most broadly marks the 
character of Thomas is his attitude towards 
Jesus on hearing of the death of Lazarus. Let 
us review the facts for a moment. 

There has been a commotion in the streets 
of Jerusalem. The transition of Jesus from the 
work of a reformer to the work of a theologian 
has produced also a transition in the feelings 
of the multitude. They pass at a bound from 



: THOMAS THE CONVINCED 139 

'applause to reprobation. Goaded by the sugges- 
tion of heresy in His teaching, they assail Him 
with stones. The majesty of Christ's presence 
saves Him — paralyses the directness of their 
aim. Evading the fury of the populace, He 
retires into a secluded place, and for some tim« 
is visible only to His disciples. At last, to this 
desert spot come tidings of the death of Laza- 
rus. Then Jesus resolves to return. The dis- 
ciples are startled — on His account and their 
own. They are very unwilling to come into the 
vicinity of a place which had been so fraught 
with fear, so full of danger. Jesus, for His 
part, is determined. He says, * I go. ' He 
does not ask any one to accompany Him; He 
simply expresses His personal resolve. Then 
through the silence one man speaks out for 
the company — * Let us also go, that we may 
die with Him ! ' It is the voice of Thomas. 

Now, I say that this utterance of Thomas 
reveals at one and the same moment the deep- 
est scepticism and the highest love. The scep- 
ticism does not lie in his expectation of Christ's 
death. That was the very thing which Christ 



I40 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

wished His disciples to expect, nay, to build 
their hopes upon. But the scepticism of 
Thomas comes out in the belief that the death 
of Jesus would be the death of His kingdom. 
* Let us go, that we may die with Him. ' The 
man who uttered these words had, at the time 
when he uttered them, no hope of Christ's res- 
urrection. No man would propose to die with 
another if he expected to see him again in a 
few hours. Thomas, at that moment, had given 
up all intellectual belief. He saw no chance 
for Jesus. He did not believe in His physical 
power. He had made up his mind that the 
forces of the outer world would be too strong 
for Him, would crush Him. The penitent said 
to the dying Lord, * Remember me when Thou 
comest in Thy kingdom.' Thomas could not 
say that ; he saw no kingdom beyond the death ; 
he could only cry, ' Let me die with Him ! ' 

But what a cry was that! It was the voice 
of a boundless love. The natural sequence to 
the view held by Thomas would have been, 
'The game is lost; save yourselves who can!' 
The average man would have said, ' Our Master 



THOMAS THE CONVINCED 141 

is bent on a course which must inevitably end 
in the ruin of His cause; it now becomes im- 
perative that we should provide for ourselves.' 
Thomas says, on the contrary, * It now becomes 
imperative that I should share His ruin — die 
with Him.' It is what I would call the logic 
of love — a kind of reasoning which on any other 
ground would be deemed absurd. It never oc- 
curred to Thomas that there could be a possibiL 
ity of separation between his interests and the in- 
terests of his Master. In his mind they were one. 
He would have been glad to have shared in His 
good fortune had good fortune been His lot; 
but since the cypress and not the laurel had 
been His, the only remaining consolation was 
the possibility of being overtaken by the same 
storm and crushed in the same ruin. I know 
not in all the opening life of the apostolic band 
where to look for such a form of love. To find 
it in the primitive Gospel 1 must go out of 
that band. To meet with a perfect analogy I 
must go to those women who followed Jesus 
from the obscurity of Galilee to the obsequies 
of the grave. I think they were animated by 



r42 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

the love that dwelt within the heart of Thomas 
— the love which could exist even amid the be- 
lief that Christ had no outward sun. I think 
these women believed that Christ had no out- 
ward sun. They came to the sepulchre; but it 
was not because they looked for His resurrec- 
tion ; it was to anoint His body with the spices. 
Their whole solicitude was for the preservation 
of the body ; * They have taken away my Lord, * 
cries one of them, *and I know not where 
they have laid Him!' They never would have 
brought the spices if they had expected a resur- 
rection. Why anoint a body for the grave which 
the grave in a few hours was to yield up to life 
and liberty! The bringing of the spices was 
the highest proof of their shattered creed, and 
it was at the same moment the strongest evi- 
dence of their deathless love. They had taken 
up at the last the uncrowned Christ whom 
they had accepted at the beginning, and they 
had lavished upon Him all the treasure of their 
hearts. To these feminine souls Thomas was 
more allied than to any of the first apostles in 
their first days. He was drawn to the Master 



THOMAS THE CONVINCED 143 

by something which the world could neither 
give nor take away; he had not expected the 
crown and he was not repelled by the cross. 

But this same fact has a second aspect. It 
not only reveals a Christian love existing in 
the absence of a creed, but a Christian faith 
existing in the absence of a creed. For, let us 
understand distinctly what that was for which 
Thomas was prepared to die. It was an ideal. 
Paul says there is a faith which worketh by 
love. The love of Thomas reveals such a faith. 
What he proposed to die for was really a be- 
lief — the belief that death with Jesus was better 
than life without Him. I would call this a 
dogma of love as distinguished from a dogma 
of knowledge. It was an article of faith pre- 
scribed by the heart and enshrined in the book 
of the affections. Thousands of martyrs have 
died for their faith in Jesus; Thomas was will- 
ing to do so too. What is the difference be- 
tween the faith of Thomas and the faith of the 
martyrs ? It is this : The martyrs saw the sac- 
rifice from under the laurel; Thomas contem- 
plated it from beneath the cypress. The mar- 



144 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

tyrs had their eye upon the rainbow; Thomas 
looked upon the cloud. The martyrs were con- 
vinced, not only of Christ's spiritual beauty, 
but of His physical power; Thomas was satis- 
fied only of the former. The martyrs beheld 
an eternity beyond; Thomas did not. Hence 
the martrys really said, * Let us die for Him ' ; 
Thomas exclaimed, * Let us die with Him. ' 
It is the difference between optimism and pessi- 
mism ; but it is not a difference in the intensity 
of faith. When I say, * I believe in that man, ' 
I express my confidence in the man himself — 
confidence in his honour, in his uprightness, in 
his integrity of character. If I should be obliged 
to entertain dark views about his worldly pros- 
pects, this will sadden me, but it will in no wise 
shake my faith. My faith was not in his worldly 
prospects, but in himself — in my ideal of the 
man; and that ideal will remain unbroken, un- 
dimmed, unaltered, by any contingency that can 
befall his fortunes. 

But behind this cry of Thomas there is some- 
thing more — something which gives his faith 
an aspect higher than he himself knew. For, 



THOMAS THE CONVINCED 145 

what was this determination to die with Jesus? 
It was really an unconscious act of homage to 
the majesty of a human soul. He was declaring, 
not by word but by deed, that mind is greater 
than matter, nay, that a single mind can to him 
outweigh all the material glories of the universe 
— its suns and its systems, its silver and its gold. 
The man whose deed could say that, was very 
near the hope of immortality. He might call 
himself an agnostic, an unbeliever, a man with- 
out a creed; but the mental act of sacrifice to 
the majesty of mind proclaimed him not far 
from the vision of eternal life. I do not wonder 
that Jesus offered him an aid to the belief in 
resurrection. It was worth while to help such 
a soul. He was nearer to the belief in res- 
urrection than many who professed it. He 
had not seen the city of gold ; but he had seen 
the transcendent beauty of the human soul. 
To have the vision of such a beauty is to be 
more than half-way to the happy land of Beulah. 
There are a greater number in the world like 
Thomas than the world dreams of. There are 
those whom we call secularists, nay, who call 



146 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEM 

dieiiiselves sa They say, 'Never mind look- 
ii^ beyond tiie skies; let us attend to the 
wants of our brotfaer-man; let ns suiieuder our 
lives to the life of humanity!' And many of 
diese labour in that caose with great success. 
But why? It is becanse; like Thomas^ th^ 
z'zir^ man more wortb serving than liHtln. 
There :s more in their heart than in their cate- 
:::sni. Their catechism saEys, 'Do not look 
z»e '"ir. 1 ".~e e^oith ; but their eye has m an nn- 
c::.s: ::s :r :ment already looked bqrond and 
ty is more than miiiiiMin ciay. 
r^v is latent faith. 
I ':.!■■ t :eer. erieivooring to acooont for the 
pr::'e~ l- rl^ed in that woodeifiil episode of 
tre r :-::e r e Thomas is rqiresented as ask- 
inr a s; " that Christ has risen— 'Ex- 

:e" I ri sr r Hb hands the print of the 
hsiyi into His side; I will 
;:: : ezi lies in the fact that 
:ei — :'i2.: Christ in the case of 
Trims ie;ir:5 :::r. H:5 us _il practice of diS- 
ccunrrr srr :: i: :e : riasity. Bat where we 
err is in aitnbunr.r :-z: ^Mrit to Thomas. I 



THOMAS THE CONVINCED 147 

have heard Thomas described again and again as 
a speculative mind — a mind seeking to dive into 
the secrets of the future. A more unfair view 
of his position is not to be conceived. Per- 
haps he was the least speculative of all the apos- 
tles, and for the very reason that he was the 
least hopeful. Speculation is inspired by hope, 
it was hope that made Peter see his vision at 
Joppa. It was hope that gave John his vision 
at Patmos. It was hope that opened to Paul 
a glimpse of the highest heaven. But Thomas 
was not a man of hope; he was a man of de- 
spair. Curiosity was no part of his nature. 
His cry for a sign of the risen Christ was not 
really a cry for the resurrection; the present 
life had not been so bright to him as to make 
him interested in another. But what he was 
interested in was the survival of his Lord Him- 
self. What cried out for satisfaction was not 
his curiosity but his love. The sign he asked 
was a sign that his Master was alive — a sign that 
he could meet Him again, speak to Him again, 
commune with Him again. Thomas had no 
wish to lift the curtain of eternity. He was 



148 THE REPRESENTATR^ MEN 

content to remain in ignorance of what ' the 
angels desire to look into.' All he wanted was 
to be convinced that his Lord was in the land 
of the living by the touch of a vanished hand 
and the sound of a voice that had been still. 

And Christ granted him that con\iction. 
* Reach hither thy finger, ' He says, * and be- 
hold My hands, and thrust thy hand into My 
side, and be not faithless but believing ' ; and 
with a great cry love recognises its object and 
clasps its restored treasure. But even in his 
moment of transport Thomas receives an inti- 
mation that the sign which he asked was not the 
best thing — * Because thou hast seen, thou hast 
beUeved ; blessed are they that have not seen and 
yet have beUeved. ' What does Christ mean by 
these words.? It is worth while asking, for 
they express the reason of His habitual unwill- 
ingness to reveal Himself by material signs. 
Are we to understand that it is a more blessed 
thing to believe on slender e\ddence than on 
grounds of assured conviction } This is, I think, 
the common interpretation. The value of faith 
is supposed to Ue in its want of credentials. 



THOMAS THE CONVINCED 149 

One of the Church fathers says, * I beUeve, 
because it is impossible. ' It reminds one of the 
famihar story of a Httle girl in a Sunday-school 
who, when asked to define 'faith,' wrote this 
answer — * It is the power to believe something 
which you know to be false.' But our Lord's 
view here is just the opposite of this. When 
He says, * Blessed are they that have not seen 
and yet have believed, ' He means that they are 
blessed because their faith rests on higher evi- 
dence — the evidence not of the sense but of the 
soul. The writer of the Acts says that Christ 
burst the bands of death because it was not pos- 
sible death should hold Him. This is what I call 
unseen evidence — his Christ was not immortal 
because He rose from the grave ; He rose from 
the grave because He was immortal. If the 
rising had taken place unknown to any human 
soul, it would not have altered this man's opin- 
ion. Christ and death were to him two irrecon- 
cilable quantities; he could not think of them 
together. His formula would be, not * the Res- 
urrection proves Christ, ' but * Christ proves the 
Resurrection.' That is a faith which Christ 



I50 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

pronounces, which we must pronounce, blessed. 
To feel that the life of Jesus is its own witness, 
that the purity of His heart is bound to see 
the King in His beauty, that the self -surrender 
of His spirit ensures Him the kingdom of heaven, 
that His mourning for sin demands in the here- 
after a compensating comfort, that His meek- 
ness merits a future inheritance, that His hunger 
and thirst after man's righteousness has a claim 
to be filled * in the sweet by and by ' — this is 
a faith which rests upon a rock impregnable, 
and compared to whose blessedness the sight of 
material wonders is poor indeed. 

LORD, there are times in which my experi- 
ence is the experience of Thomas. There 
are days when I hear not the bells of Easter 
Mom. I tread the road to Emmaus, and I 
meet not the risen Christ. I call to the five 
hundred brethren, and they answer not. I 
stand on the mountain of Galilee, and there 
comes no voice amid the breezes. I sail on Gen- 
nesaret's lake, and I see no vision. I fre- 
quent the upper room, and get no hint of His 






THOMAS THE CONVINCED 151 

presence. My faith cannot walk by sight in 
hours like these. What shall I do at such 
times, O Lord! Hast Thou a remedy for the 
loss of light.? Yes, my Father. Thou hast a 
gate where faith can enter without seeing where 
it goes; its name is Love. Lead me by that 
gate when my eye is dim! When I cannot 
follow Him to Olivet, let me worship Him on 
Calvary! When betimes I lose sight of His 
risen form, do not shut me out from the bearing 
of His name ! In the days when immortal hope 
is dim, make room in my heart for immortal 
memory ! If I cannot soar with Him into heav- 
en, let me at least go back to finish His work on 
earth! Let me gather the fragments of the 
cross which remain on the Dolorous Way ! Let 
me distribute of the twelve baskets which were 
not served in the wilderness! Let me take 
up His burden at the spot where He was too 
faint to carry it! Let me mourn with the 
Marthas whose Lazarus I cannot raise ! Let me 
pray with the paralytics whose weakness I can- 
not cure! Let me sing to the sightless whose 
eyes I cannot open ! Let me lend to the lepers 



152 THE REPRESENT ATIVE MEN 

the touch of a brother's hand ! Let me find for 
the fallen a chance to renew their days! Then 
shall my evidence come back — brighter, strong- 
er. Then shall my Easter Mom shiae again 
through the clouds of night. Then shall I 
know the meaning of these words: 'Blessed 
are they that have not seen, and yet have be- 
lieved. ' 





CHAPTER VIII 

PHILIP THE DISILLUSIONED 

A COLOURLESS face may have very strong feat- 
ures. There are faces in the New Testament 
Gallery whose colourlessness repels us. We 
wonder how they have found their way into 
such an august company. To drop the meta- 
phor, their lives seem devoid of incident. Their 
names occur but once or twice on the Sacred 
Page, and in a connection apparently so trivial 
as to leave nothing worth transmitting. But 
as we look longer and closer, we change our 
mind. We feel as if suddenly a microscope 
had been put into our hand. The seeming 
trifle assumes magnitude, the passing reference 
becomes big with suggestion, the commonplace 
statement is found to be full of significance; 
and the man who at first appeared a mere 

cipher takes his place among the leading men of 
153 



154 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

the Gallery and the representative men of the 
world. 

One of the best instances of this is, I think, 
to be found in Philip of Bethsaida. The com- 
mon impression is that we know nothing about 
him. For a long time I studied his counte- 
nance in vain. It seemed expressionless, char- 
acterless. No ray flashed from the eye to 
awaken human interest. The man appeared a 
lay figure placed in the group merely to fill up 
a gap. Was there any personality about him 
— ^anything worth converting, worth transmit- 
ting, worth transforming.!* At first one was 
disposed to answer. No. Yet I felt that my 
impression must be wrong. This man was 
sought out by Jesus Himself. He was the first 
who ever heard the Christian command, ' Fol- 
low me ! * Jesus sought those who were sick 
— physically, morally, or mentally. His seek- 
ing of Philip implied that there was something 
to remove. I felt that this * something ' must 
be indicated, and that if I searched long enough 
I ought to find it. I did search, long and 
patiently, and I think I have found it — ^have 



™ discovered that element in Philip which ren- 
dered him a man requiring the Master's care 
and representing through all time one section 
of mankind. 

The question then is, What is, in Philip's 
case, the stone which had to be rolled from the 
door of the sepulchre, in other words, what was 
the original imperfection of his nature? We 
have seen the moral impediments of others — 
how the Baptist needed expansion, John self- 
forgetfulness, Peter courage, Nathanael ro- 
bustness, Nicodemus instruction, Thomas hope. 
What did Philip need.? Can we put our hand 
upon his barrier.? Can we tell the nature of 
that moral struggle which raises his life from 
insignificance to interest, and gives him a per- 
manent place among the great cloud of wit- 
nesses ? 

I think we can. It seems to me that the 
moral impediment of Philip was an illusion about 
the nature of the religious life. He thought 
religion was something above the common plain. 
It was too serious a matter to be concerned in 
the ordinary duties of the world, too solemn a 



156 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

thing to be brought down to streets and ' open- 
ings of the gates.' By all means the duties 
of the hour should be attended to, but they 
ought to have their own agencies. Religion 
should be made to dwell in a higher and purer 
atmosphere. It should be kept for ecstatic mo- 
ments in which the world can be forgotten and 
time can be no more — moments in which the 
soul is carried right into the presence of its 
God, and hears things which cannot be spoken 
amid the duties of the earthly day. At such 
times the world must drop from a man like 
Elijah's garment, and all his mundane responsi- 
bilities must be overshadowed by another and 
a higher life. 

Why do I think that this was the original 
view of Philip.-* From two episodes in his 
history, both recorded in the Fourth Gospel. 
Nothing can exceed the apparent difference be- 
tween these two episodes. The one is at the 
breaking of bread in the wilderness; the other 
occurs at that solemn hour when Christ in His 
farewell sermon was raising the thoughts of 
His disciples to the sources of spiritual peace. 



PHILIP THE DISILLUSIONED 157 

The one is in the sphere of the secular; the 
other is in the region which men call sacred. 
The one is concerned with the wants of the 
body; the other is occupied with the needs of 
the soul. The one is a scene of philanthropy; 
the other is a scene of piety. In both of these 
opposite episodes Philip is a prominent figure. 
And yet I have no hesitation in saying that 
in each of them he has one and the same 
attitude. In each of these varied circum- 
stances we find the man subject to the same 
illusion — the belief that religion is something 
too high and holy to ,be identified with the 
good works of common day. I think this will 
become evident if we consider the episodes 
separately. 

I begin with the earlier. Jesus has crossed 
the Sea of Tiberias and has reached its eastern 
shore. Great crowds are coming in the same 
direction — some from the scattered ranks of the 
Baptist, some consisting of the pilgrims to the 
Passover at Jerusalem. Both are naturally 
drawn to Jesus — the disciples of the Baptist 
by a kindred association, the Passover pilgrims 



158 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

by a spirit of devotion. We should have thought 
Jesus would have grasped the moment as one 
eminently adapted to the spread of His doc- 
trines. Strange to say, His whole interest is 
bent upon something else. He thinks entirely 
of the physical wellbeing of that crowd. They 
must already be hungry and faint with their 
journey. If they are to interrupt that journey 
to listen to Him, they will be more faint and 
hungry still. Accordingly, Christ's primal care 
is for their bodies, their food, their nourish- 
ment. He intends that before all things they 
shall receive provision for their temporal wants. 
But He is not content to achieve that; He 
wishes His disciples to go along with Him, to 
sympathise with Him. And so, He starts a 
problem of political economy — How shall we 
procure food for this multitude; is there any 
neighbouring store from which we can buy.? It 
is Philip that He addresses — probably because 
He feels that Philip is the most likely to be 
surprised at such a human interest on His 
part. Philip's answer is certainly not sympa- 
thetic — * It is impossible ; even if you could get 



PHILIP THE DISILLUSIONED 159 

two hundred pennyworth of loaves it would not 
suffice to give a small amount to each; the 
scheme must be abandoned. ' 

For this answer Philip has reaped much ob- 
loquy. The obloquy is just; but I think it is 
bestowed on wrong grounds. Philip is blamed 
for losing faith in the Messianic power of Jesus 
— a power in which originally he strongly be- 
lieved. But I do not think this was really his 
position. This man was no sceptic about the 
claims of Christ. He had not lost one jot 
of his faith in the Messianic mission of Jesus. 
Where he erred was in denying to that Mes- 
sianic mission a right to be interested in what 
he called trifles. It is another form of the ob- 
jection to the blessing pronounced on the lit- 
tle children. The love for children was all 
right, and the nurture and admonition of chil- 
dren were desirable; but to single them out 
as a section of Christ's army, to ordain them 
publicly to a great Messianic work — this was 
something which seemed incongruous with the 
Christ. So did the proposal in the wilderness. 
Benevolence was good and the wants of the 



i6o THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

poor a legitimate subject of solicitude; but it 
was deemed a subject for the economist, for 
the capitalist, for the citizen. It was surely 
no part of the province of Messiah Himself! 
Was it not a thing for His agents, His sub- 
ordinates! Was not the Messiah's work cos- 
mopolitan — concerned with momentous issues 
and big with solemn interests! It could never 
be expected that He should interrupt that 
work to give personal attention to a trifle of the 
hour ! 

I feel sure that this, and not want of faith, 
was the motive of Philip's answer to Jesus. 
It was his opinion that Jesus would not think 
it worth while to manifest His power in a scene 
so humble. And I believe that in His subse- 
quent act of political economy the design of 
Jesus was to counteract this impression. The 
narrative as given by St. John clearly implies 
that Jesus intended here to make Himself the 
subject of a special revelation. But what about 
Himself did He wish to reveal.? Was it the 
fact that He had power to expand a meagre re- 
past into a great banquet ? No; it was the fact 



PHILIP THE DISILLUSIONED i6i 

that He had the will to do so, that He did not 
deem it beneath His dignity to do so. That 
was what He wanted the multitude to learn; 
that was what He wanted Philip to learn; that 
was what He desired the world of all times to 
learn. We have still our Philips among us — 
men of devout faith who yet by their very devo- 
tion divide God too much from man. To all 
such the old narrative carries the eternal moral 
that the God of the telescope must be the 
God of the microscope too, and that the Power 
which guides the Pleiades must be able to direct 
a sparrow's wing. The later Isaiah says of God, 
* He calleth the stars all by name ; because He 
is great in power not one faileth.' The Philips 
of the world would have inverted the state- 
ment, would have said, * Because He is great 
in power He cannot be expected to take care 
of individuals.' But the words of the prophet 
are held true also by the evolutionist, and re- 
ligion has here found an ally in science. The 
claim of seeming trifles to be subjects of Uni- 
versal Law is one of the greatest lessons this 
world has ever received. 



i62 THE REPRESEXTATR^E MEN 

I come now to the second episode which in- 
dicates the limitation in the character of Philip. 
It occurs in a totally different direction, but 
it reveals the same tendency. The scene is 
that hour between the Passover and Geth- 
semane when Jesus delivers His parting mes- 
sage. It is distinctively a message to the troubled 
heart. Other messages had been addressed 
to different sides of human nature. Some had 
been spoken to the troubled body; they had 
brought the words of healing. Some had been 
spoken to the troubled conscience; they had 
breathed the words of pardon. Some had been 
spoken to the troubled spirit — troubled as to 
where lay its road to duty; they had pointed, 
like the Sermon on the Mount, to a life of sac- 
rifice. But this last message of our Lord was 
spoken to the troubled heart. It was a season 
of bereavement. The disciples were losing 
the object of their dearest love. For the first 
time perhaps in their Uves, their souls were in- 
tent on the problem of immortality. Therefore 
it is of immortality that Christ speaks. He 
tells them of a life beyond, of a place which He 



PHILIP THE DISILLUSIONED 163 

is about to prepare for th^m in the mansions of 
heaven. He tells them that He is going to no 
foreign scene, but to the house of His Father. 
He tells them that neither will they find it for- 
eign — that they will be where He is, and so 
have a sense of home. But Christ's deep teach- 
ing had taught these men to be critical. They 
begin to question — they ask how they are to 
get there, and where the region lies. Then 
Philip makes a bold proposal. He suggests a 
method by which all doubts will be lulled to 
rest. Let Christ give them a vision of the 
Father — of the Father Himself — of the primal 
source of all being, without any intermediate 
veil. You will observe the thoroughness of the 
demand. He wants no manifestation from the 
stage — Jesus had given many such. He wants 
to get behind the scenes, to get into the green- 
room, to know the private counsels which 
guide the drama of life. He is determined 
to go to the root of the matter, and the root of 
the matter is to him the beginning of crea- 
tion, ' Lord, show us the Father, and it suffi- 
ceth. ' 



i64 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

Now, there is one respect in which Philip 
was right. He was right in thinking that our 
best evidence of immortality comes from the 
vision of the Father. I cannot understand how 
any man who has a firm conviction of the 
fatherhood of God can be sceptical about the 
immortality of the soul. Remember, I speak 
of the fatherhood of God. I do not think the 
mere belief in an author of the universe is suf- 
ficient to bring the conviction of human immor- 
tality. We have seen men like Francis New- 
man accepting the existence of a Supreme Power 
and yet refusing their assent to the other doc- 
trine. No man would be entitled to say, * Show 
us that there is an unknown power in the uni- 
verse, and it sufficeth.* But every man is 
entitled to say, * Show us the Father, and 
it sufficeth.' It was not there that the fault of 
Philip lay; Christ's answer virtually admits 
that he was right. The highest evidence of 
immortality is the vision of a God who has a re- 
lation to the human soul. The very incomplete- 
ness of that soul then becomes an argument in 
its favour. For, in the light of Divine father- 



PHILIP THE DISILLUSIONED 165 

hood, we say, * God will not leave His structure 
unfinished; He must have determined to finish 
it elsewhere. ' Tennyson cries, * Thou art just ; 
Thou wilt not leave me in the dust.' It may 
seem a bold thing in a matter of this kind to 
appeal to the justice rather than to the mercy 
of God. It is worse than bold if God be not 
our Father. But if God be our Father, His 
mercy and His justice are one. The yearning 
of a human soul becomes itself a claim. The 
aspiration of a human heart becomes itself a 
right. The cry of a human spirit becomes it- 
self a call for the fulfilment of a promise; 

Philip, then, was justified in his view that 
the shortest road to the hope of immortality 
is a vision of the Father. But he neutralised 
his doctrine by taking a long road to that 
vision. Where Philip erred was in the belief 
that a vision of the Father was best reached 
by getting away from human contact or, to 
repeat the old metaphor, by quitting the stage 
for the greenroom. To him the Divine was 
something apart from the human; to behold it 
he must withdraw himself. He must retire 



1 66 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

from the footlights, from the drapery, from the 
actors in the scenes of time. He must get be- 
hind the scenes. He must seek a moment of 
ecstasy in which he will be raised above the 
things of the day and of the dust and ushered 
into that august Presence which transcends the 
works of man. 

And this is the view of PhiHp which our Lord 
combats here. He tells him that the knowl- 
edge of the Father is not reached in the way 
he supposes. He tells him that the love of 
the Father is learned on the stage of time — 
not behind it, * He that has seen Me hath 
seen the Father, and how sayest thou then, 
Show us the Father!' He tells him that it is 
not where human work is transcended that we 
get our deepest glimpse of the Divine; it is 
precisely where human work is richest — *The 
Father that dwelleth in Me doeth the works.' 
Would Philip beUeve in Divine fatherhood, let 
him study human brotherhood. Let him con- 
sider the spirit of Christ as it exists in the 
world. Let him ponder how through that 
spirit man has sacrificed for man, how love has 



PHILIP THE DISILLUSIONED 167 

dared many a cross, how sympathy has shared 
many a sorrow, how pity has dried many a tear, 
how compassion has healed many a pain, how 
benevolence has assuaged many a hunger. Let 
him ponder these things, and he will reach a 
clearer vision of the fatherhood of God than if 
he stood in the forest primeval in the solitary 
presence of the Divine. 

Such is the burden of Christ's message to 
Philip. I have been struck with the fact that 
before it became a formal message it was made 
a practical training. We read that — some 
three years earlier — immediately after Jesus had 
called him to join the league of pity, he brought 
another man to the league — ' Philip findeth 
Nathanael.' Why does he rush at once to 
secure a companion in his own calling.? We 
do not wonder when we are told that Andrew ^ 
after his own call, finds his brother Simon. 
These were brothers, and it was inevitable 
that either adversely or favourably the act of 
the one should influence the other. But Philip 
and Nathanael were not brothers; to find 
the latter required a seeking on the part of the 



1 68 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

former. Why does Philip hasten to implant 
in the heart of another a conviction at which 
he himself had only arrived yesterday? I be- 
lieve the answer to be that he was told to do 
so. I think that the moment he gave his al- 
legiance to Jesus, Jesus said to him, * Find Me 
an additional man.' And I believe the reason 
of this request was not the helping of Jesus but 
the helping of Philip. Jesus might have called 
Nathanael by a telepathic message; but Philip 
would thereby have lost an element in his edu- 
cation. If Philip was the man we have found 
him to be — with a tendency to underrate the 
practical, there could be no better introduction 
to his Christian trainuig than to give him prac- 
tical work. He ought not to be allowed to go 
home and dream of twelve legions of angels. 
Let him look to the help of his brother-man, nay, 
let him make an effort to initiate that help. 
Let him use his human judgment. Let him 
find a man himself — one whom he believes to 
be fitted for the great work of inaugurating 
the future kingdom. All education should be 
directed to the weak point of a nature. If 



PHILIP THE DISILLUSIONED 169 

you see one like Paul whose life has been en- 
tirely occupied with the practical, send him into 
Arabia — seclude him for a time that he may 
meditate. If, on the other hand, you see one 
like Philip disposed to look for God in things 
behind the scenes, send him into the practical 
world — ^let him find an additional man. 

As a further contribution to this training, 
Philip, in the latest days of Christ's ministry, is 
made the instrument of a wondrously practical 
work quite on the lines of his search for Nathan- 
ael. If you or I were suddenly asked the ques- 
tion, Which of the Christian disciples brought 
the earliest help to the Gentiles? I do not think 
we should immediately hit the answer. We 
should probably say * Paul ' or * Peter ' or * Ste- 
phen.' But in truth there was one before any 
of these — it was Philip. After our Lord Him- 
self, the first who spoke a word to the Gentiles 
was this obscure man of Bethsaida. Before 
Peter had called Cornelius, before Stephen had 
lifted his voice, before Paul had raised his ban- 
ner, Philip had brought a Gentile band into 
the presence of Jesus. True, they were the 



I70 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

descendants of Jews ; ^ but they had been bom 
in a foreign land, bred in a foreign culture, 
trained in foreign ideas. They had become 
Greeks in nationality, Greeks in education, 
Greeks in taste, Greeks in manner. But they 
had heard of the fame of Jesus, and they longed 
to see Him. Their pride in the old ancestry 
was not dead. They were glad that where their 
fathers' homes had been, there had risen a 
great light. How were they to gaze upon that 
light ? The Jews would now despise them, count 
them aliens. Yet they would try. The Pass- 
over Feast was coming on; they would go up 
to Jerusalem; perchance some one might show 
them the new star. They come; and they are 
gladdened by a discovery. Among the names 
of Christ's inner circle they hear of one which 
is Greek — Philip. They are attracted by the 
kindred sound. Is not tkts the man to lead 
them to Jesus — a man with an affinity of name 
to the names of their own countrymen! And 

^ T have taken this view instead of the prevalent one 
which makes these men pure Greeks ; I do not think the 
latter view sufficiently accounts for their interest in Jesus. 



K PHILIP THE DISILLUSIONED 171 

so Philip becomes the medium of the first Gen- 
tile wave. To him is it granted to open the 
door. To him is committed the privilege of un- 
veiling the Christ to the eyes of other lands. 
tfo him, above all, is assigned the glory of per- 
orming the great marriage between the East 
and the West, and of joining the hand of Europe 
to the hand of Asia ! 

Was there any fruit of this union .^ Did the 
meeting of Philip with the Greeks produce any 
effect on history.? Let me hazard a suggestion 
— a suggestion which, so far as I know, has not 
been made before, but which has long been 
graven on my own mind. Some years after- 
wards there appeared in the Christian world a 
young man of great power and promise. He 
was a Greek of Jewish descent, and his name 
was also Philip. Like the elder Philip, he too 
was commanded to work in a desert — a. place 
where to all appearance no bread could be 
found. Yet it was found — in rich superabun- 
dance. In that desert he met only one man 
whom he could make a Christian; but that 
one man was the centre of a whole kingdom — 



172 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

the bread was multiplied indefinitely. Now, I 
have always believed that this second PhiUp 
received his name at baptism in honour of the 
first. I have always believed that he was one 
of those Greeks who came to the Christian apos- 
tle with the intention of seeing the Lord. I 
have figured to myself the result of that vision. 
I have seen this youth baptised into the new 
faith, and in the strength of gratitude taking 
the name of his patron. I have seen him go 
forth fired with the enthusiasm of spreading that 
faith among his countrymen. I have seen him, 
after the death of Stephen, emerge as the cham- 
pion of these countrymen and claim their rights 
in the Christian community. Then I have 
seen his sympathies widen — ^go beyond Greece, 
pass into Samaria, travel into Ethiopia, move 
wherever the spirit prompted him. If the life 
of such a man was the fruit of the visit to the 
apostle Philip, the ministry of that apostle was 
abundantly blessed. 



PHILIP THE DISILLUSIONED 173 

T ORD^ often, like Philip, I have been under- 
'■— ' rating my surroundings. I have been 
complaining of my prosaic sphere; I have been 
saying, * Whence shall I find bread in this wil- 
derness to feed the multitude of men!' I 
have been looking for aid to an opening in the 
heavens — to the descent of pov/ers supernal. 
It never occurred to me that one loaf of bread 
could be multiplied into a million. It never en- 
tered into my mind that one man could be an 
army, one life a kingdom, one soul a generation. 
But Thou hast taught me, O my Father. Thou 
hast shown me the triumph of my trifles, the 
majesty of my rejected moments. The hour 
over which I wept is waving with banners. The 
book over which I slept is surging with songs. 
The fence over which I leapt is laden with pearls. 
My fancied weed has become a flower; my im- 
agined prison has become a bower; my sup- 
posed weakness has become a tower. Evermore 
let me reverence the prosaic things! Ever- 
more let me uncover my head to the place that 
seems a desert! Let me walk with solemnity 
beside the rill ! — it may be a river one day. Let 



174 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

me tread with awe the village street! — it may 
be a city one day. Let me stand with venera- 
tion before the squalid child! — ^he may be a 
Shakespeare one day. Once, with proud foot I 
passed a hovel by; I was in search of great 
events, and I lingered not. And lo! I had 
passed the great event of Thy world — the babe 
whose swaddling bands were to enfold all na- 
tions! The gold and the frankincense and the 
myrrh were there, and the motherhood that 
taught Thy fatherhood, and the wisdom that had 
found a new worship, and the star that had lit 
a new hope ! When I am tempted to despise the 
desert, let me remember, O Lord, the majesty 
of the manger! 



CHAPTER IX 

MATTHEW THE EXALTED 

There is nothing more striking in the Chris- 
tian Gallery than the variety in its modes of 
redemption. Christ produces a revolution in 
every soul with which He comes into contact; 
and yet in no two cases is the revolution pre- 
cisely the same. Human weakness is as varied 
in its forms as human virtue ; therefore the cure 
of human weakness must be also varied. In 
the figures which have already passed before us 
we must have been struck beyond everything 
with the absence of uniformity in their disease 
and its treatment. We have not found any two 
of them alike in the symptoms which needed to 
be healed. There is no analogy between the 
original defect of John the Baptist and the orig- 
inal defect of John the Evangelist ; the one is 

the narrowness of personal zeal, the other the 
175 



176 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

narrowness of personal pride. There is no re- 
semblance between the imperfect views of Na- 
thanael and the imperfect views of Nicodemus; 
the former come from rustic simplicity, the 
latter from scholarly culture. There is no par- 
allel between the cloud in the mind of Peter and 
the cloud in the mind of Thomas ; the one comes 
from want of courage, the other purely from 
want of hope. 

I am now approaching a figure of the group 
whose prominent feature is just the fact of his 
redemption — Matthew the Publican. Our first 
impression is that we must expect to fi.nd this 
man without any special weakness, but encrust- 
ed with a mass of sin all over. We can put 
our hand upon the error which signalised the 
Baptist. We can point to the fault which dis- 
tinguished the evangelist John. We can indi- 
cate the weakness which marred the progress of 
Peter. We can tell the besetting frailties which 
lent struggle to the lives of Philip and Thomas 
and Nicodemus. But if we were asked to spe- 
cialise the fault of Matthew, I think we should 
say, * You might as well ask me to special- 



MATTHEW THE EXALTED 177 

ise the fault of a quagmire ! ' We look on this 
man, not as one with a besetting sin, but as 
one who had sin for his very essence. I went 
into a country church one day and heard the 
character of Matthew expounded as if his bad- 
ness were a truism. He was everything that 
was wicked — ^an extortioner, a cheat, a defraud- 
er, a liar, a man dishonest in thought and word 
and deed. Here was a character with no spe- 
cially besetting sin. You could not label him. 
You could label Peter or John or Thomas, but 
not Matthew; he was a quagmire — he was pol- 
lution all round. 

Now, let me say at once that this is not the 
view I have taken of the matter. I think Mat- 
thew was a man with a special defect — not with 
pollution all over. The latter supposition is neg- 
atived partly by the fact of his call and mainly 
by his immediate response to that call. It was 
a call, not to mere mercy, but to the height 
of apostolic dignity. I could understand a man 
like Judas becoming depraved subsequent to or- 
dination; but I cannot understand a man called 
to ordination at a time when he was already 



12 



178 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

depraved. And if I am reminded how the 
heart can conceal its vices, still less can I under- 
stand how a heart with such vices could care 
for such ordination — ^how a man of extortion, 
of fraud, of covetousness, of avarice without 
principle and greed without justice, could in 
a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, give up 
his entire world and join the ranks of poverty. 
I have already said, in speaking of the transi- 
tion into a new life, that the actual plunge is 
ever sudden; but I have also said that there 
is a long walk to the river-side. A conversion 
like this would have been to Matthew an expe- 
rience of the plunge without the walk. 

And what is the evidence on which rests the 
unqualified badness of Matthew.? It is the ob- 
loquy attached to his profession. The preacher 
says: *This man was a publican — one of those 
who farmed the taxes for the Roman govern- 
ment. Those who farmed the taxes were se- 
lected from the lowest social strata. They were 
originally poor, hungry, ill-clad. The occupa- 
tion, therefore, to which they were chosen placed 
them in a sphere of strong temptation. They 



» 



MATTHEW THE EXALTED 179 

had every inducement to be unjust, to overreach, 
to exact, to falsify, to become the instruments 
for bribery and corruption. And Matthew was 
one of these. He was a member of this fra- 
ternity, immersed in a trade which held out a 
prospect of gain to the unscrupulous and of- 
fered a life of comfort to him who did not resist 
the tempter. Surely a record like his could 
have only one issue!' 

The logic of this is deplorable. It is equiva- 
lent to saying that, if a man belongs to a call- 
ing which involves a particular temptation, he 
must be held guilty of having yielded to that 
temptation. Consider for a moment. There 
is no profession known to me which does not in- 
volve its own special temptation. The clerical 
calling tempts to narrowness, the medical to 
materialism, the legal to the loss of sentiment, 
the literary to a spirit of selfishness. Yet one 
of the broadest men I ever knew was a sin- 
cerely orthodox cleric ; one of the most assured 
Christians I ever knew was a leading physician ; 
one of the most kindly sympathisers I ever 
knew was a legal practitioner; one of the most 



i8o THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

sacrificing lives I ever knew was a highly suc- 
cessful writer. We must protest against attrib- 
uting to any man the special sin of his calling. 
It is unfair; it is negatived by a thousand facts. 
There was nothing in Roman tax - gathering 
which made vice in that calling a necessary thing. 
In point of fact, the vice came from the outside. 
The masUr-puh\icQ.ns were men of rank and 
credit ; but they put their work into the hands 
of subordinates who were often taken from the 
slums. The vices these exhibited in their pro- 
fession were brought with them in^o their pro- 
fession ; they came from the previous corruptions 
of human nature, and no trade is chargeable 
with them. We cannot morally label Matthew 
by calling him * Matthew the Publican. ' 

The truth is, the obloquy with which Matthew 
was regarded by his countrymen did not pro- 
ceed from the fear that he was a bad man, 
but from the certainty that he was a bad Jew. 
The most galling fact to the Israel of later days 
was the fact that she paid tribute to another 
land. Ideally, she claimed to be the mistress of 
the world — the nation into whose treasury all 



MATTHEW THE EXALTED i8i 

tribute should flow. To the proud eye of the 
prophet Isaiah, she had been the mountain es- 
tablished on the top of the hills, and toward her 
height the other lands had looked, wondering. 
That such a nation should pay taxes to a for- 
eign people, a Gentile people, was an awful 
thought. It was a pain worse than laceration, 
more cruel than a blow. But there was the pos- 
sibility of a pain more poignant still. It was 
bad enough that the tribute of homage from Is- 
rael should be collected by a Roman. But 
what if the man who gathered it should be a 
son of Israel herself — a scion of her race, an 
heir to her promises, a nursling of her prophets ! 
What if the man who taunted her with her mis- 
fortunes should be one born within her pale, 
bred within her precincts, sheltered within her 
privileges — one from whom was due the venera- 
tion for her sanctuary and the reverence for her 
God! Would it not seem to her as if all her 
calamities had culminated and as if the cloud of 
her sorrow had deepened into starless night ! 

Now, this often happened; and it happened 
in the case of Matthew. Here was a Jew who 



i82 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

had lost the last shred of patriotism! He had 
forgotten the traditions of his ancestors — for- 
gotten the parted waters of the Red Sea, and 
the burning bush, and the pillars of cloud and 
fire ! He had become oblivious that he was the 
son of a race which claimed the ultimate do- 
minion over all the world ! He had not only ac- 
cepted without a blush the domination by the 
stranger; he had taken part with the stranger 
in his domination ! He had attached himself to 
the enemies of his country — had become a col- 
lector of their tribute from his own conquered 
land ! This was hard upon that land. The man 
who acted thus was bound to be execrated by 
his race. He was execrated on that ground 
alone. No amount of personal vices would in 
the eyes of his countrymen have added to the 
enormity of his sin, and no amount of personal 
virtues would in the slightest degree have mini- 
mised that sin. His deed was itself to them 
the acme of all iniquity, from which nothing 
could detract and which nothing could intensify. 
The blackness of Matthew's character in the 
eyes of the Jew was the fact of his apostasy. 



MATTHEW THE EXALTED 183 

But the question is, What is its blackness in 
our eyes ? We sympathise much with the feel- 
ing of his countrymen; yet, after all, that is a 
local matter, and the question should be viewed 
apart from local considerations. We must ask 
ourselves. Where lay the precise fault in this ab- 
sence of patriotism? When we have answered 
that, we shall have found the real weak point 
in the character of Matthew — the point which 
made him an object for Christ's compassion, and 
the point which suggested Christ's mode of cure. 

It is quite evident to me that a defect in 
Jewish patriotism always proceeded from one 
definite defect in character — a want of self-re- 
spect. I do not say that every man who has 
lost his patriotism has lost his self-respect, for 
every man's country is not meant to be identical 
with his own soul. But the Jew's was. I have 
already said in speaking of Nicodemus that in the 
Jewish community the nation and the individual 
were one. A man's loves and fears were for 
his native land. His land was a part of himself 
— the largest part; its preservation was his 
main motive for living. A Jew could only for- 



i84 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

get his country by ceasing to care for himself — 
by losing self-respect. All in him that was per- 
sonal was national — ^his feasts, his sacrifices, his 
family, his hopes, his sins, his sorrows, his very 
aspirings after immortality. To destroy within 
his heart the care for his country was to destroy 
within his heart all care for anything. 

Here, then, is the real source of Matthew's 
want of patriotism; it is want of self-respect. 
His defect is the extreme opposite of that which 
we found in the original nature of the evangel- 
ist John. John, as I have indicated, had too 
big a mirror; Matthew had no mirror at all. 
John saw his youthful figure at an exaggerated 
height; Matthew beheld no reflection of him- 
self whatever. John required to have his glass 
smashed; Matthew needed to have a glass con- 
structed. John had too much pride; Mat- 
thew had too little. It would be difficult to 
say which of the extremes is the more fraught 
with danger — the excess of self-respect or the 
absence of self-respect. Too steadfast a gaze 
at self has slain its thousands; but it may be 
doubted if th.^ failure to see one's self has not 



MATTHEW THE EXALTED 185 

produced as many victims. Pride is a positive 
state; want of self-respect is a negative state. 
But I think the mind suffers as much by its 
moments of negation as by its moments of posi- 
tive evil. The heart filled with personal vanity 
is not safe; but the heart unfilled by any per- 
sonal interest is no safer. There are in my 
opinion as many young men led astray by the 
want of a looking-glass as by the over-prominence 
of a looking-glass. It is a dangerous thing 
when we express a real truth by the words, * I 
do not care.' 

I have said that the want of self-respect is in 
itself a negative quality. I wish to emphasise 
the point, because it is often mistaken for things 
from which it is quite different. For instance, 
we associate this quality with meanness. Yet 
the mean man is never without his mirror. 
He errs, not by want of self-respect, but by a 
low ideal of what in the self is respectable. 
He sees himself in the glass adorned in purple 
and fine linen and faring sumptuously every day. 
He says, * This is "to live," this is "to prosper," 
this is "to be respected"!' Then follows the 



i86 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

conclusion, * This is the only thing worth striv- 
ing for; let me work for nothing else, aim at 
nothing else, dream of nothing else ; let me seek 
wealth at all times and by all means ! ' 

Will any man say that such a soul is in want 
of a mirror! Does its meanness not come from 
its mirror — from the sight of a false ideal of 
what it is to be great ! Such a soul has reached 
its dishonesties, its frauds, its extortions, its 
unjust dealings, by nothing else than a mode of 
self -contemplation — by gazing into a glass which 
paints the little as if it were the grand. If Mat- 
thew had lost his Jewish patriotism, he was not 
that man, for he who lost his Jewish patriot- 
ism lost his glass too, and had no longer an 
aim in life either high or low. 

Again. We often associate want of self- 
respect with abjectness. By abjectness I mean 
one's feeling that he is a poor creature — that he 
is a worm and no man. And yet this condition 
is also incompatible with the loss of the mirror. 
It is itself a looking into the glass. It is by the 
reflection in that glass I come to the conclu- 
sion that I am a poor creature. The word 



MATTHEW THE EXALTED 187 

'self-respect' literally means self - regarding, 
self-beholding. In the case of the crushed or 
abject man, he beholds himself as an object 
of compassion, as a thing worthy to win pity, 
as one who deserved a better fate. The man 
who has lost his mirror cannot be an abject man. 
That would be a contradiction in terms; he 
would have no shadow of himself to look at, 
and so could not grieve over it. Matthew was 
not an abject man. Not even after his call does 
he sit in sackcloth and ashes over the mem- 
ory of his past. On the contrary, he makes a 
great feast in his own house and invites his 
fellow-publicans. The act could never have 
proceeded from one beholding his natural face 
in a glass. 

What, then, is the bane of having no mirror? 
It is being down without knowing it. It is the 
living by the day — ^without a plan, without a 
principle. It is a vegetable life. It is the ab- 
sence of all desire to look forward to anything, 
to look backward to anything, to look upward 
to anything. It is the enclosure within the mo- 
ment. It is the experience of a state of mind 



i88 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

which may not always be doing harm, but which 
is never doing good. It may keep the precepts, 
*Thou shalt not kill,' 'Thou shalt not steal,' 
* Thou shalt not bear false witness ' ; but it will 
have no impulse to seek and to save, no bosom 
on which to lay the burdens of humanity. 

What, therefore, did Matthew need? It was 
a mirror — a sense of exaltation. It is not enough 
that a man has no depression ; he must have ex- 
altation. I will go further. I think that in spir- 
itual matters the valley is nearer to the moun- 
tain than is the plain. I believe that a life 
of conscious depression will sooner reach the 
sense of a height than a life of commonplace 
prosaic routine which looks neither up nor 
down. Matthew was a man of the plain. He 
was not, like Thomas, a man of the valley. 
Thomas had depression, in other words, he 
saw himself in a glass and pitied himself. But 
Matthew had no depression. His was not a 
valley experience. He lived on level ground 
without depths or heights. He never saw him- 
self—he had no mirror. To have a mirror you 
must be either on the mountain or in the vale; 



MATTHEW THE EXALTED 189 

Matthew's was as yet a plant's life. Jesus 
said, ' I must give this man a sight of his high- 
er self, of his possible self. ' He felt that what 
Matthew needed was a stimulus — something to 
lift him up. There were those to whom He 
came with a cross — those who, like the woman of 
Samaria, had to be wakened to their own shame. 
But to this man He came with a crown. What 
Matthew needed to feel was his own importance. 
Let him be lifted up to the mountain — sud- 
denly, drastically, unexpectedly. Let him get a 
sight of his future self, what he is coming to, 
what is coming to him. Let him see himself as 
God meant him to be — 3. man of dignity, a man 
of power. That was what Jesus did to Matthew 
the Publican. He came without warning, with- 
out preparation. He stood before him at the 
receipt of custom. He ignored all the crowd 
assembled there. He fixed His gaze upon him 
alone — apart from his fellows, apart from the 
yielders of his tribute. He addressed him with- 
out preamble, without title — as if He were sum- 
ming up a long process of reasoning; He said, 
bluntly and boldly, ' Follow Me ! ' 



I90 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

For the first time in his life Matthew found 
himself a man — a man of importance, a man 
of mark. He awoke to find himself famous 
— an object of interest, a centre of attraction. 
He had the novel experience of standing with 
a mirror in his hand looking at his own person. 
So novel was the experience that it carried 
him away. Surprise overmastered him. That 
Christ should choose him — the cipher, the no- 
body, the man who had forfeited his right to 
call himself a son of Israel — this was a start- 
ling thing. That he, who had never been dig- 
nified enough to care what the world might 
think of him, should be suddenly called to stand 
before the world as an example, was a thought 
almost weird in its strangeness. The newness 
of the sensation quite conquered him. * Follow 
Me!' said the voice; and he lingered not a 
moment. He did not wait for enlightenment; 
he had got the one light whose absence had made 
him ignoble — self-respect. His exodus came 
with his exaltation. The instant he said, * I am 
somebody,* he rose and left Egypt. He went 
out from the receipt of custom and passed over 



MATTHEW THE EXALTED 191 

into the Christian land. Like Israel, he made 
his ' ' passover ' a subject of congratulation. 
Our last glimpse of him but one is at that ban- 
quet which he spread as a farewell to the old 
and an inauguration of the new. 

But there is one glimpse more, and it is to 
me the most suggestive of all. The next time 
we see Matthew he has a pen in his hand; he 
is writing a gospel. Volumes have been multi- 
plied on that gospel. Discussions have been 
reiterated as to the source of its materials and 
the origin of its information. Commentaries 
have been accumulated exhausting every possi- 
ble meaning of his words and embodying every 
thought involved in his teaching. It would seem 
as if the subject were at last threadbare. And 
yet there is one fact about this gospel which, 
so far as I know, has never been spoken — ^its 
connection with Matthew's call. We are in the 
habit of regarding it as a purely impersonal 
piece of writing — without any note of autobi- 
ography or incidental emergence of the author's 
memory. The truth, as I believe, is that the 
very central idea of the book is itself a note 



192 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

of autobiography. What is that central idea? 
It is the spirit of patriotism. The Gospel of 
Matthew is the most patriotic of all the gospels. 
His Christ is the Christ of Israel — born king 
of the Jews. All that He does is made to echo 
the glories of Matthew's native land. Every- 
thing about Him is the flowering of Israel's 
prophecies, is done *that it might be fulfilled 
which was spoken.' The glory of Messiah is 
that He has glorified this favoured nation — 
proved that she was right in her aspirations 
and in her dreams. This patriotism of the First 
Gospel is of course known to every schoolboy. 
But have we considered what it means in re- 
lation to the character of Matthew himself.? 
Nothing less than a moral revolution. This 
man's defect had all along been a want of pa- 
triotism. He had ignored the claims of his coun- 
try, he had disregarded the ties of his people. 
But, when for the last time our eyes rest upon 
him, he is a man transformed. He has become 
rich just where he was poor, overflowing just 
where he was deficient. He is a patriot of the 
patriots. His country which yesterday was noth- 



MATTHEW THE EXALTED 193 

ing is to-day ail in all. He has put on the arms 
of his race — is prepared to fight for it, to die for 
it. He has declared himself a son of Israel 
and is ready to lavish on her all his praise. 

And I think there is something very grand 
and very beautiful in this final glimpse which 
we receive of Matthew the Publican. It is our 
glimpse of one who has got back his self-respect 
and longs to atone. He has been for years de- 
nuding his country of her due. He now says, * I 
must make it up to her at last, though late; I 
must compensate her for the gifts I have with- 
held!' I say there is something fine in this 
man's light at evening-time. Though it is 
evening, though the day is far spent, though 
many golden hours and golden opportunities 
have been lost, he will not despair of undoing 
his past. He will concentrate into the evening 
sky what he should have spread over the whole 
day. He will bestow his gifts in double meas- 
ure. He will assign to his native land a glory 
which he could not, even if he would, have given 
in his morning hours. For now the Christ 

has come — Judah has received her latest flower. 
13 



194 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

He can tell her of that flower, can tell her of 
her share in its production. He can tell her 
how she has been justified, glorified, raised out 
of the category of vain dreamers and proclaimed 
to be a nation which has a star in heaven. That 
is why Matthew in the evening writes his life 
of Jesus. 

LORD, teach me the dignity of my own soul ! 
Many have warned me of the pride of 
life; and it is evil and harmful indeed. But I 
think an equal danger has come from my hours 
of recklessness. I think I have never been fur- 
ther from Thee than in the moment when I have 
said, * Life is a worthless thing ! ' Whenever I 
go out without my mirror I am very near 
temptation. When I say in my heart, * It will 
be all the same a hundred years hence,' I am 
perilously close to the precipice. In that mo- 
ment I have broken my mirror — have lost sight 
of life's magnitude, life's value. When I lose 
the sight of life's value, I begin to value lower 
things; when I break my mirror, I look into 
the muddy pool. My Father, I think it is for 



MATTHEW THE EXALTED 195 

idle hearts that Satan finds mischief. Save 
me from an idle heart — z. heart that has nothing 
to love! If my heart has its mirror, yea, even 
its mirror of care, I shall not touch the miry 
clay. All idleness is the heart's idleness — the 
heart ceasing to vibrate. Though my hands 
be folded, though my lips be silent, though 
my feet be resting, though my fancy be repos- 
ing, yet, if my heart be carrying its mirror, I 
am not idle. Keep that glass undimmed, O my 
Father! Whatever else I lose, let me never 
lose my love — the sense that life holds some- 
thing dear! Let no cloud curtain it! Let no 
storm sink it! Let no waters wash it away! 
May every beam brighten it! May every hope 
hallow it! May every fear freshen it! May 
every dream deepen it ! May every cross crown 
it ! May every rock rivet it ! May every strug- 
gle strengthen it ! May every providence purify 
it! May it be my star in night, my song in 
stillness, my flower in winter, my rainbow in 
tears, my help in sorrow, my home in exile, my 
youth in autumn, my island in the sea! Never 
let my heart drop the mirror of its glory ! 



CHAPTER X 

ZACCHEUS THE CONSCIOUS-STRUCK 

The name of Zaccheus occupies only a few 
verses of St. Luke's Gospel. It does not occur 
in any other Gospel, and throughout the Scrip- 
tures it is never mentioned again. But a man's 
place in the Gallery is by no means determined 
by his prominence in the Record. What decides 
a man's place in the Gallery is his uniqueness. 
Is there anything in his face or figure which sep- 
arates him from all the surrounding portraits.? 
If there is, then, however seldom he may be al- 
luded to, he is entitled to a prominent position 
in the Scripture Gallery; if there is not, then, 
however frequent be the recurrence of his name, 
he has no right to a distinctive place. The 
question is, Has Zaccheus anything new to say 
—anything that has not been said by Peter 

or John or Philip or Thomas or Nathanael ? Is 
196 



I 



ZACCHEUS THE CONSCIOUS-STRUCK 197 

the phase of Christianity which he expresses 
different from the phases which have been pre- 
viously expressed? Does he stand for a class 
which has not been already accounted for ; does 
he represent a section of mankind who have as 
yet received no spokesman? Then is he am- 
ply entitled to occupy a front ground in that 
great collection of portraits which has conveyed 
to all times the separate phases of the Christian 
life. 

And I say that Zaccheus is such a man. He 
flashes out a new shade of colour in the Great 
Gallery. He is not exactly like any of his pred- 
ecessors. The nearest approach to him is Mat- 
thew — both were publicans. Yet, unlike Mat- 
thew, Zaccheus was not an object of personal 
recrimination to his countrymen. He was not, 
as Matthew was, a subordinate who collected 
the taxes. He was a masUr-puhlicdxi — a, rich 
man living in Jericho who simply estimated the 
revenues and reported them to the government. 
The fruits of his conversion no doubt resembled 
those brought forth by Matthew, and this is 
easily explained by the identity of their pro- 



198 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

fessions. But the men originally were very dif- 
ferent. Matthew was a man with no interest 
in life; Zaccheus is essentially the reverse — a 
man of curiosity. Matthew had slow pulses; 
the heart of Zaccheus beat rapidly. Matthew 
needed to be called; Zaccheus took the initia- 
tive. Matthew required stirring up; Zaccheus 
would run a race or climb a tree in the eager- 
ness to secure his object. 

If I were asked to state in a sentence what 
Zaccheus represents, I should say he stands for 
the average man wakened by conscience. Hith- 
erto in this Gallery we have not seen the average 
man. We have seen men whose likeness will 
be found in every age and clime ; but that does 
not make one an average man. Peculiarities 
may be reproduced in every age and clime ; but 
they will not be reproduced over the whole mass. 
Peter is not an average man; he is the speci- 
men of a type of mind. John is not an aver- 
age man; he is the representative of a class. 
Nathanael and Nicodemus and Thomas and 
Philip are not average men ; they stand for par- 
ticular phases of human nature. But Zaccheus 



ZACCHEUS THE CONSCIOUS-STRUCK 199 

belongs to the majority. There is nothing 
peculiar about him, nothing marked, nothing 
uncommon. His special feature is his want of 
specialty; it is a feature which we have never 
met before, and which in the remaining figures 
we shall not meet again. Everything about his 
character is middle-sized. Physically, he is of 
short stature; but mentally, he is neither short 
nor tall. He is neither a paragon of excellence 
nor a monster of wickedness. He is not a hero 
and he is not a demon. He has many good 
points, but they never blaze; he has many bad 
points, but they never freeze. He is the average 
man. He is as virtuous as his neighbours. He 
never transgresses use and wont. He does 
nothing wrong in the way of business for which 
he cannot quote a precedent. He may overleap 
the laws of rectitude; but he would be miser- 
able to be told that he had violated the mer- 
cantile standard of those around him. He lives 
up to his own measurement; but he measures 
himself by the mass. 

Such is my reading of the original character 
of Zaccheus. He was a man who was always 



200 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

standing before a judgment -throne to give 
an account of what he had done ; but it was not 
the judgment-throne of Christ. It was the 
throne of public opinion before which he stood 
— the standard of those within his immedi- 
ate environment. When he transgressed that 
tribunal, his conscience troubled him; but the 
tribunal itself was a very inferior one — ^his con- 
science ought to have demanded more. What 
he needed was to have his conscience placed 
at the bar of a higher throne of judgment. He 
required to see a loftier ideal, to feel the pres- 
ence of a more exacting law. Our first impres- 
sion is that a man of such a comparatively cor- 
rect life is favourable soil for the planting of 
Christian seed. It appears easier to convert 
him than one who is down in the depths. But 
I think this impression is erroneous. There 
is none so difficult to move upward as the aver- 
age man — ^none whom it is so hard to quicken 
into a Christian conscience. And the reason 
is that the man has a conscience already of a 
very keen though very inferior stamp. The 
tribunal of public opinion blunts him to every 



ZACCHEUS THE CONSCIOUS-STRUCK 201 

other tribunal. He is lulled into complacency. 
The judgment-throne is low-set, but it is the 
highest he has known, and it has been his stan- 
dard through life. He has always reverenced 
the average — the golden mean. Christianity 
makes its appeal to something abnormal — to 
those who feel as if they were below the aver- 
age, as if they were the chief of sinners, as if 
they could only beat upon their breast and cry, 
* Unclean ! ' The man who lives in Jericho and 
is content with the consciousness that he is 
up to the average life of Jericho has a natural 
disqualification for meeting Christ — the dis- 
qualification of those who think they have al- 
ready attained. 

What enabled Zaccheus to surmount this 
natural barrier.? Strange to say, it was the 
fact that his religious deficiency was counter- 
balanced by a purely secular impulse — the spirit 
of curiosity. The picture as delineated in 
the Gallery is graphic. Jesus is coming to 
Jericho, and Jericho is on fire with expectation. 
His fame has gone before Him. Crowds have 
gathered in the streets to await His arrival — anx- 



202 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

ious inquirers about the health of body or 
soul. Zaccheus is anxious neither about body 
nor soul ; but he is eager to see. If he has any 
concern, it is about his physical limitations. 
How shall a small man like him be able to pro- 
cure a sight of Jesus with such a dense pha- 
lanx in front of him ! An idea strikes him. He 
feels sure that Jesus will not address the people 
while they are in the streets — He will advance 
into the open and let the multitude follow 
Him. Little Zaccheus will get ahead of them. 
He will run before into the woodlands and climb 
up to the branch of a tree, where his small stat- 
ure will be compensated by artificial height and 
he will see over the heads of taller men. 

Now, I venture to say that in all the Gospel 
narrative this is a unique approach to the per- 
son of Christ. All the others were either an- 
swers to His own invitation or advances of the 
sufferer impelled by human pain. Here is a 
man who has not been called and who has not 
been afflicted. He has neither been summoned 
from the receipt of custom like Matthew nor 
driven by the burden of sorrow like Jairus. 



ZACCHEUS THE CONSCIOUS-STRUCK 203 

He has no ailment about him, no depression 
about him. He is alive with the spirit of youth, 
and he is brought by an impulse which is the 
very index of the youthful spirit — curiosity. 
Unique as it is in the Gospel, it is ever the ap- 
proach of the average man towards every great 
and good thing. It is the child's attraction 
to school, the boy's attraction to knowledge, 
the youth's attraction to travel, the man's 
attraction to nature. Announce a descriptive 
lecture on Palestine illustrated by the magic- 
lantern, and the young people will come in 
crowds. They will not be drawn by the prom- 
ised description nor even by the promised illus- 
tration of it — an interest in Palestine requires 
mental development. They will be attracted 
by the magic - lantern itself ; the scenes de- 
picted will be interesting not as scenes of Pal- 
estine, but as feats of pictorial transformation. 
Yet, who does not see that in the future the 
memory of these things will become grapes of 
Eshcol. What is now a mere source of curios- 
ity will come to the mature mind as a hallowed 
remembrance clothing in form and colour those 



204 THE REPRESENTATR^ MEN 

spots of sacred story which would otherwise 
convey nothing but a name. 

Zaccheus came to the temple of Christian 
truth as the average man is led to all truth — 
on the wings of curiosity. His was apparently 
the lowest motive in all that crowd. Yet he 
is singled out as if he were the hero of the 
crowd. To him, sitting in his sycamore tree, 
the voice of Jesus cries, ' Make haste, Zaccheus, 
and come down, for to-day I must abide at 
thy house.' The favour is so great, and the 
privilege so well-nigh unparalleled, that we are 
tempted to ask if we have not underrated the 
spirit of curiosity. Surely the Master must 
have seen in this man's motive something more 
than we see — something which placed him on 
a higher level than those who had come to 
be cured of bodily maladies! Can it be that 
there is after all a mental element in curiosity 
— ^an element which is indicative of the charac- 
ter and predictive of the life ! Let us see. 

There is to my mind a great resemblance be- 
tween the spirit of curiosity and the spirit of 
prayer. Neither of them is in itself either good 



ZACCHEUS THE CONSCIOUS-STRUCK 205 

or bad; it depends on what you are curious 
about, it depends on what you are in want of. 
Prayer may be of three kinds — immoral, non- 
moral, or moral. If I ask for vengeance on an 
enemy, that is immoral prayer. If I ask for a 
chariot and horses, that is non-moral prayer — 
it is neither saintly not sinful, but purely sec- 
ular. If I ask to be made holy, harmless, and 
undefiled, that is moral prayer — it is a sign of 
incipient purity. So, also, there are three 
kinds of curiosity — immoral, non-moral, and 
moral. If I am eager to see a bull-fight, that 
is immoral curiosity — it is a wish to view pain. 
If I am eager to see a man who professes to 
lift heavy weights, that is non-moral curiosity 
— it is neither good nor bad. If I am eager to 
hear a great preacher who has for months been 
attracting crowds around him, then, even though 
it may be accompanied by no anxiety about my 
spiritual state, that is moral curiosity — it indi- 
cates a listening attitude in the human soul 
and the presence of an open door. 

I do not wonder, then, that Zaccheus was 
singled out from the multitude. His body was 



2o6 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

on a sycamore tree and was therefore easily 
distinguishable. But his soul was also on a 
sycamore tree — raised above the crowd. His 
very physical elevation, separating him as it did 
from outward contact with Jesus, showed that 
he wanted nothing physical — ^that his motive 
was curiosity of mind. I do not wonder that 
this approach, prayerless as it was, imper- 
sonal as it was, unsolicitous as it was, made an 
impression on Jesus beyond the common cries 
for bread and sustenance. It was like the 
impression made on Him by Thomas. But 
Thomas came with low hope — if he asked noth- 
ing it was because he expected nothing. Zac- 
cheus had the spirit of youth; his hopes were 
high; only, they were mental hopes. He 
swung up his little body beyond the reach of 
temporal help; but he bent the eye of his soul 
upon the vision of Jesus. What he wanted to 
see was a spiritual glory, and Christ rated the 
man according to his desire. He picked him 
out from the mass and said, * I must abide at 
thy house to-day. ' 

I wish here to direct attention to a frequent 



ZACCHEUS THE CONSCIOUS-STRUCK 207 

peculiarity in the method of Jesus. When He 
is about to confer a favour on any one, He often 
begins by asking a favour from him. How- 
ever dimly Zaccheus is aware of his mental 
need, Jesus knows it very well and is prepared 
to remedy it. Yet, instead of telling him that 
he is a poor creature requiring Divine aid, He 
asks aid from him. He says, * I require shelter 
to-night; no house will be so convenient for 
me as yours; can you give me room.?' We 
see the same thing in the case of the woman of 
Samaria, where He begins by asking a drink 
of water. We see it in the case of Magdalene, 
where He allows her service to precede His 
cure. We see it in His acceptance of the invi- 
tation to abide at Emmaus. We see it in His 
receiving of hospitality at many a feast. We 
see it in His submission to the outpouring on 
His person of the costliest ointment, and in His 
willingness to partake of material comforts from 
the hands of the women of Galilee. 

These facts are not accidental. They are a 
part of the deep moral insight of Jesus. What 
is the relation which He wishes to establish 



2o8 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

between Himself and His followers? It is one 
of communion. Now, communion cannot be 
on one side. It is not possible that such a 
relation can exist between any two minds if the 
one is active and the other passive. There is 
nothing so paralysing as the perpetual receiv- 
ing of benefits. Even in a case of forgiveness 
the delinquent should be allowed to do some- 
thing for his pardoner. If I have offended you, 
there is a breach between us; and that breach 
is not healed by the mere fact that you forgive 
me. Even after the forgiveness, I am still in 
the valley and you on the mount. It is not 
enough that you descend to me; I must be 
allowed to meet you half-way. Pardon is not 
reconciliation. In one sense it is the reverse 
of reconciliation, for it emphasises the differ- 
ence between your height and my depth. Rec- 
onciliation seeks to abolish that difference. It 
aims to break inequality, to restore communion. 
It cannot restore communion while the sac- 
rifice is all on one side. I who am pardoned 
must be suffered to do something for you the 
pardoner. It is not enough that you bring 



I 



ZACCHEUS THE CONSCIOUS-STRUCK 209 

forth the best robe and put it on me; I must 
be allowed to give a garment to you. Christ is 
coming to pardon Zaccheus; but He does not 
want this pardon to leave Zaccheus in the valley. 
He desires him to have a memory that he too 
was the bestower of a gift, that he was able 
to extend a courtesy in return for favours re- 
ceived. And so, with a fine touch of graceful- 
ness, He makes it appear as if the favour were to 
Him. He asks hospitality, shelter, companion- 
ship for the day. As He had begged the Sa- 
maritan for a draught from the well, He begs 
Zaccheus to make Him a guest for the hour; 
and in both cases for the same reason — that the 
mind, before its vision, may have a sense of in- 
dependent dignity. 

Jesus, then, became for one day the guest of 
Zaccheus ; and at the evening-time there dawned 
for him a great light. It was a light which rose 
upon his conscience. He stood before a new 
judgment-seat ; and there sat on it *one like 
unto a son of man.' Hitherto, the arbiter of 
his conscience had been public opinion. Sud- 
denly public opinion became valueless. All the 
14 



210 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

social magnates fled from his throne, and in their 
place there stood one soUtary figure wielding the 
sceptre over his heart and giving the law to his 
life. In the morning he had said, 'How will 
societ}^ regard me ? ' in the evening his question 
is, ' WTiat wUl Jesus say ? ' In the morning he 
was comforted by the low standard of a multi- 
tude; in the evening he is ruffled by the lofty 
standard of One. In the morning he was self- 
complacent by viewing the numbers on his 
own road; in the evening he is perturbed by 
the sight of a single indi\-idual on the summit 
of a commanding hilL 

Yet, there is something startling about this 
revival in the conscience of Zaccheus. It is 
not exactly what we should expect We ex- 
pect to see an awakened man bow his head and 
cry, * Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner ! ' Zac- 
cheus feels himself to be in moral debt; but, 
strange to say, it is to man. He has two cries 
of remorse; but they are both for the human. 
He feels he has done too Httle good, and he feels 
he has done too much bad. He wants to remedy 
both — the one by charity and the other by com- 



ZACCHEUS THE CONSCIOUS-STRUCK 211 

pensation, * The half of my goods I give to the 
poor, and if I have taken any thing from any 
man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. ' 
We hear the same double cry from the lips of 
Matthew ; he makes a feast to express his char- 
ity, and he writes a Gospel to redeem his want 
of patriotism. But the strange thing is that 
these men should not have first wished to put 
themselves right with God. When David kills 
Uriah, he takes a theological view of the mat- 
ter, and cries, in the psalm traditionally attrib- 
uted to him, 'Against Thee, Thee only, have 
I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight.' 
Why should Zaccheus take a human view of 
the matter! Why should he allow the injury 
to his fellow-creatures to obscure his sense of 
an offended Lawgiver! Why should he look 
with dismay on what he has failed to do and 
what he has done amiss for humanity when there 
is another and a graver subject which should 
press upon his thoughts — ^his violation of the 
statutes of heaven, his breaking of the command- 
ments of God! 
But look deeper. Do you suppose Zaccheus 



212 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

thought this * another subject ' ! Do you think 
that when he lamented his shortcomings to- 
wards his fellow-men he regarded himself in any 
other light than as a transgressor of Divine law ! 
Remember into what he had been baptised that 
day ! He had accepted a new definition of God 
— ^had said, * God is love. ' What did that mean ? 
It meant that for him in all time to come the 
law of God was broken when the rights of man 
were violated. It meant that to outrage the 
justice of God was to trample on the heart of 
his brothers. It meant that to leave poverty 
unassisted, to pass privation unpitied, to turn 
aside from the sight of struggle and pain, was to 
commit sacrilege against the Divine mercy-seat, 
to stain the steps of the altar of sacrifice. It 
meant that, if Zaccheus were conscious of an 
unpaid debt to man, it was really the con- 
sciousness of an unpaid debt to God, and that 
the road to atonement with God was through 
the rehabilitation of man. That was the new 
view which burst upon the soul of this man of 
Jericho. It was a view which embodied the 
whole doctrine of the coming Calvary. It taught 



ZACCHEUS THE CONSCIOUS-STRUCK 213 

that the way to reconciliation with the Father 
is to lay down life for the brethren, and that to 
atone for past sin is to bear the cross of human- 
ity. It was really an annulling of the distinc- 
tion between the secular and the sacred. To 
the eye of Zaccheus all duties became church 
duties. His receipt of custom became a Di- 
vine service to be piously performed. The ex- 
change took the sanctity of a temple. The 
gifts bestowed upon the widow and the orphan 
were treasures lent to the Lord. The coin laid 
on the lap of poverty was a holy offering to heav- 
en. The raising of a life from secular want 
and temporal despair was the building of a new 
synagogue which one day might be fit for the 
habitation of the King of kings. 

And this union of the secular and the sacred 
within the heart of Zaccheus explains something 
which separates his call from most other Gospel 
calls — which gives it an aspect more consonant 
with modern than with ancient life. When 
Christ summoned men to join His standard, the 
obedience to the summons commonly involved 
a change of occupation. * We have left all. 



214 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

and followed Thee' is the cry of the disciples. 
The fishermen of Galilee were transformed into 
fishers of human souls; Peter, Andrew, James, 
John, Philip, forsook their nets when they be- 
came members of the league of pity. Matthew 
himself, whose case is the most analogous to that 
of Zaccheus, is called out of his profession; he 
leaves the business of tax-gathering when he fol- 
lows Jesus. But Zaccheus gets no such com- 
mand. The change wrought in him is all within. 
He is not told to give up his trade, to abandon 
his daily resorts, to quit the exchange and the 
market-place. He is not led to think that the 
employment he has been pursuing is common or 
unclean. Rather does there flash upon him 
the knowledge that he has been polluting that 
which is holy, staining that which is sacred, 
soiling that which is Divine. There breaks 
upon him the conviction that to be a good man 
he needs not the wings of a dove to fly away 
— ^that he may stand here and be holy, work 
here and be pure, toil amid the perishable things 
of time and yet perform the deeds of a saint 
of the Most High. I think there is some- 



ZACCHEUS THE CONSCIOUS-STRUCK 215 

thing very fine in the fact that, amid the many 
Gospel pictures of men leaving the old world 
to win the new, there is one which depicts a 
human soul in a different attitude — as impreg- 
nating with its own purity the things among 
which all along it has lived and moved and had 
its being. 

ABIDE in my house one day, O Son of Man ! 
A voice has sung in Thy praise, ' I tri- 
umph still if Thou abide with me.' Yet it is 
not for the triumph I need Thine abiding; it is 
rather for the overshadowing of my too-tri- 
umphant self. I am ever triumphant in myself 
when Thou art not with me. I am like the 
artist that has never seen a picture but his own. 
He is very proud of his own, for he has no 
artistic conscience to see its blemishes. He will 
never be great till he sees its blemishes — till 
one of the master-painters come and 'abide' 
with him. I too am without conscience till Thy 
coming. I cannot see my spots till the sun 
rise. It is not my blemishes which drive me to 
Thy light; it is Thy light which drives me to 



2i6 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 



n 



my blemishes. Never can I learn the poverty 
of my own painting until Thy portrait is hung 
upon my wall. Then my true conscience will 
be born; then shall I realise my own nothing- 
ness. From Thy light shall come my loathing; 
from Thy beauty shall come my burden; from 
Thy song shall come my sigh. I shall be dissat- 
isfied in the dawn. I shall be humbled on the 
height. I shall be convicted when I put on the 
crown. Rise upon my night that I may know 
my night ! Sing in my silence that I may search 
my silence! Shine in my heart that I may 
hate my heart! Flood me with Thy love that 
I may learn my lovelessness ! Touch me with 
Thy peace that I may perceive my pain ! Take 
me up to the mount, O Lord, take me up to the 
mount! for only in Thy pure air shall I find 
my foulness, and only in an upper room shall 
I discover the depth below. I shall cease to 
triumph in myself if Thou shalt * abide with me. ' 



CHAPTER XI 

JAMES THE SOFTENED 

All the figures we have been considering have 

been men of the spring. What I mean is that 

they recognised a power in Christ the moment 

He was presented to them. They may have 

erred as to where that power lay — Nicodemus 

may have seen it too much in the physical, 

Thomas too little; but a power of some kind 

they all at once recognised. We are coming 

now, however, to a figure which reveals an 

exception to the rule; it is that of James the 

Lord's brother. I would call him distinctively 

the man of the autumn. It is not that in point 

of time he was late in becoming a Christian — in 

years he was young when he joined the cause 

of Christ. But he was old in experience. He 
217 



2i8 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

had resisted the Christian influence longer than 
any of his apostolic contemporaries. And the 
fact is more remarkable because outwardly he 
was more privileged than any of these. He 
was a member of Christ's own family — ^prob- 
ably an inmate of His home at Nazareth. He 
is called 'the Lord's brother.' What that 
means I shall not here discuss. Whether he was 
a cousin of Jesus, whether he was the child 
of Joseph by a former marriage, or whether he 
was a son of Mary subsequent to the birth at 
Bethlehem, has been keenly disputed. Person- 
ally, I lean to the last view. But the point 
here is that, whichever view we take, this man 
had outward opportunities of contact with Jesus 
such as were not enjoyed by any of his com- 
rades. In spite of that, he seems at first to 
have been as great an unbeliever as Saul of 
Tarsus. There has always been to me a deep 
significance in that saying of St. John that the 
followers of Christ were *not bom of blood.' 
He must have had in his mind the fact that 
physical consanguinity had been proved in the 
case of Jesus to be no advantage to a man — 



JAMES THE SOFTENED 219 

that one could have family affinity with Him, 
live in the same house with Him, sit at the same 
board with Him, engage in the same work with 
Him, listen to His conversation on the most 
familiar topics of every day, and yet be fur- 
ther away from Him than a Matthew at the re- 
ceipt of custom or a Nicodemus in the midst 
of the Sanhedrin. 

You will remember also that this slowness 
to accept Christianity was not the result of re- 
ligious indifference. It would not be too much 
to say that it was the result of religious inten- 
sity. There never was a young man more nat- 
urally devout than James the Lord's brother. 
His misfortune was that devoutness was to 
him identical with severity. It was essential 
to him that religion should be a hard thing, a 
painful and laborious thing. That a man should 
be raised into the Divine life instantaneously 
was for him a contradiction in terms. That 
the soul by a single act of faith should soar into 
the presence of God was in his view impossible. 
He was opposed to revival movements because 
they were rapid movements; he thought Je- 



220 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

sus was ' beside Himself. ' ^ His idea of piety 
was to spend whole hours in the wrestling of 
prayer ; tradition says that his knees had become 
hard by the process. God was to him a Goal 
whose glory consisted in not being easily won 
— this was the belief of his countrymen, the 
faith of his fathers. James had by nature a 
mind sternly conservative. Paul describes him- 
self as one who had learned to be content with 
any circumstances he was placed in. James 
went further; he had learned to idolise the cir- 
cumstances he was placed in. He had hard- 
ened himself against change. Even in trans- 
formed years he delighted to think of God as 
without 'variableness or the least shadow of 
turning ' ; originally, he delighted to think of 
himself so. He would have no innovation, no 
new notions, no revolutions in opinion; relig- 
ion was for him something whose form was 
fixed once for all. 



* So I gather from the comparison of the twenty-first 
and thirty-second verses of the third chapter of Mark. 
I regard the 'brethren' of the later verse as identical 
with the 'friends ' of the former. 



JAMES THE SOFTENED 221 

So far as I know, this state of mind continued 
with James all through the earthly ministry of 
Jesus. His obduracy resisted the closest per- 
sonal contact with the Master — ^a contact ex- 
tending to the minutiae of the daily life. But 
when the visible Christ was withdrawn, when 
the shadows of Calvary had fallen and the per- 
sonal contact had become a thing of the past, it 
was then that the revelation came. Paul records 
that revelation in a brief sentence; he says of 
the departed Christ, ' He was seen of James. ' 
I think this vision of the departed Christ was 
James's first clear seeing. To my mind there 
is a strong analogy between his experience and 
the experience of Paul. They belonged to op- 
posite schools; yet I think there is a greater 
resemblance between Paul and James than be- 
tween Paul and Luke, Paul and Silas, or Paul 
and Timothy. Both were reared in rigidness. 
Both were opposed to Christianity. Both were 
men of the autumn — bringing in their sheaves 
when the day had begun to decline. Both 
recognised Christ's glory only after He had 
passed away from earth. Both, after their vis- 



222 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

ion, began a new regime and became the lead- 
ers of their respective parties. There are no 
two men whose lives present so many points of 
parallel. 

But the one point of difference is in the orig- 
inal privilege of James. Paul was not brought 
up in the companionship of Jesus; in no per- 
sonal sense had he ever known Christ after the 
flesh. But James had; his intercourse had been 
of the closest. And in relation to his autumn 
experience, this is the difficulty to be accounted 
for. Paul recognised Christ whenever he saw 
Him; James saw Him daily without recognis- 
ing Him. In this latter case the question is. 
Why ? Why was it expedient for this man that 
Christ should go away, why had the night to 
come ere he could see Him.? The man of Tar- 
sus had no meeting on the shores of Galilee; 
James dwelt within the very walls which shel- 
tered the youth of Jesus. Why is it that James 
was no nearer than Paul to the earthly recog- 
nition of the Son of Man } 

I think you will find that there are two rea. 
sons — deeply rooted in human nature and ap- 



JAMES THE SOFTENED 223 

plicable to all times. The first would sound like 
a paradox if it were not verified by experience. 
We all accept it as a truism that the great dis- 
tance of one being from another is unfavourable 
to the revelation of one being to another. But 
it is less frequently considered that an ex- 
treme opposite case is equally unfavourable. It 
is less frequently considered that a very close 
proximity of two beings, provided the proximity 
has never been interrupted, is just as preju- 
dicial to personal knowledge as would be their 
existence in separate lands. We are apt to 
think that James had a special privilege and 
that Paul had not. The truth is that neither 
had a privilege. Each had a barrier inter- 
posed between him and his Lord ; but they were 
opposite barriers — Paul was too far away, James 
was too near. 

That extreme nearness retards perception is 
a matter of daily observation. It is just as true 
of our perception of things as of our perception 
of persons. One would suppose, for example, 
that the habitual dwellers in a scene of rare 
beauty would be peculiarly alive to the attrac 



224 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

tions of physical nature. The reverse is the case. 
These are of all people the least responsive to 
the beautiful. If a stranger comes in among 
them, he is transfixed, dazzled, by the splendour 
of the scene; but his enthusiasm rather sur- 
prises them. We should suppose, again, that 
the constant inhabitants of a city would know 
more about that city than those coming into it 
from other places. Yet it often happens that 
a traveller learns more of a town in a week than 
many of its population learn all through their 
lives. We should suppose, once more, that 
those living continuously in a salubrious atmos- 
phere would be free from all illness arising from 
atmospheric causes. Yet this is not the case. 
The unvaried presence of one climate is like 
the unvaried application of a somnolent drug — 
it loses its effect. A change of air will event- 
ually be found beneficial, even though the new 
air be less balmy than the old. The mind must 
co-operate with the body to preserve the health 
of man. It is not enough that an atmosphere 
is genial; I must feel it to be genial. It must 
enter into me not only as a draught but as a 



JAMES THE SOFTENED 225 

joy. And if this joy is to be felt, it must not 
be an unvaried possession. It must be inter- 
rupted to be known; it must be withdrawn to 
be appreciated; it must be supplanted by a 
shadow to be valued as a light. 

Ascend from things to persons, and you will 
find a manifestation of the same principle. It 
is not the inmates of one house who are the 
best judges of the personality of each other. 
Even such an external matter as physical 
growth is most easily detected, not by a habit- 
ual inhabitant of the same dwelling, but by one 
who has returned after many days. In order to 
examine my brother-man it is essential that 
either he or I should stand back. The nearness 
disqualifies for observation. I knew a lady 
who had under her charge one who was af- 
flicted with a brain affection. She was eager 
from time to time that some test should be 
applied as to whether the sufferer were men- 
tally improving or declining. But she was quite 
unable to apply the test herself; the fact of 
living constantly together made it impossible 

to distinguish between minute shades of men- 
15 



226 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

tal gradation. What did she do under the cir- 
cumstances? She brought the sufferer period- 
ically to one who knew both of them, but who 
was living in a totally different atmosphere. 
His comparative distance placed him at an 
advantage; it enabled him to observe those 
indications of mental change which were alto- 
gether indiscernible by a nearer spectator. 

We arrive, then, at the conclusion that, for 
acquiring a rapid knowledge of Christian truth, 
to be the Lord's brother was a disadvantage. 
The physical relationship was itself fitted to 
make James a man of the autumn. But I think 
there was a second reason why the Christian life 
of James was retarded rather than accelerated 
by his growing up under the same roof with 
Jesus. I allude to the fact that Christianity 
seems in the beginning at variance with home 
duties. It shares this reproach in common with 
all poetry. Christianity is a poetic system. It 
professes to lift the heart into a higher and 
fairer world. By the man of home duties such 
professions are looked upon with disfavour, and, 
the more true they are, they are regarded with 



JAMES THE SOFTENED 227 

more disfavour. To have the heart intent on 
a fairer world, whether in the sphere of art or 
poetry or Christ, is deemed by the prosaic mind 
a disqualification for the things of home. Mar- 
tha is always under the impression that Mary is 
debarred from helping her by the fact that she 
sits at the feet of the Master and listens to the 
music of another land ! 

Now remember, James was by nature a pro- 
saic man; even grace did not make him other- 
wise. Grace never changes the distinctive sound 
of an instrument. It does not make the flute 
a violin or the trumpet a harp; what it does 
is to improve the quality of each instrument. 
James remained to the last a man of prosaic 
duty. His r61e was that of a practical worker, 
and he played that rdle to the end. But at 
the beginning he thought that this rdle was in- 
*compatible with high thinkings — incompatible 
with poetic flights or lofty musings or enraptur- 
ing visions. He would have said that the man 
who takes the spade in his hand should consider 
only the environment of the spade and the 
hand — only that soil which he is required to 



228 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

fructify, only those sunbeams which he is able 
to utilise, only such attributes of the wind and 
of the rain as conduce to the growth of the 
garden. 

But James lived to change his mind. How 
do we know that? Because he has left us a 
letter — one of the most remarkable epistles in 
the New Testament, embodying the ripest re- 
sults of his Christian experience. And the bur- 
den of that letter is a discovery which James 
has made — a. discovery which has softened his 
whole nature. He has found that prosaic work, 
home duty, humanitarian service, so far from 
being at variance with thoughts above the hour, 
is itself the legitimate fruit of these thoughts. 
* I will show you my faith by my works, ' he 
cries — * I will let you see how much better my 
practical duties have been done since I entered 
into the secret of Christ's pavilion and gazed 
upon the vision of a brighter day.' James has 
here struck upon a far-reaching principle — that 
the common duties of to-day are best done by 
the light of to-morrow. We see it even in domes- 
tic service — which is God's simile for His own 



JAMES THE SOFTENED 229 

service. The domestic servant has to perform 
the duty of the hour; but she will do it best if 
she has a hope beyond the hour. Has she the 
chance of a holiday. Has she the prospect of 
promotion. Has she the promise of an in- 
creased emolument. Has she news of some dear 
one coming home. Then, even though she be 
jaded and languid and weary, whatever her prov- 
ince may be it will be well fulfilled — the rooms 
will be well swept, the silver will be well pol- 
ished, the table will be well attended, the meal 
will be well prepared. Not one of us can, in mo- 
ments of fatigue and lassitude, do our work ade- 
quately if we see nothing beyond the hour. 

If you look at the letter of James in this 
light, I think there will flash upon it a new 
meaning and a new radiance. What, for ex- 
ample, is the import of that remarkable passage 
in the twenty-third verse of the first chapter — 
* If any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, 
he is like unto a man beholding his natural 
face in a glass ' } I paraphrase it thus : * No 
man can do practical work by seeing his soiled 
face in a glass — by looking exclusively on his 



230 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

naturally mean aspect and squalid surroundings. 
That will not help you to act; it will depress 
you, it will paralyse you. If you want to be 
aided in your work, you must gaze into an ideal 
mirror — must see yourself, not as you are, but 
as you ought to be, as you may be, as you shall 
be. You must behold your better self, your 
coming self, your Godward self. You must 
measure your possibilities, not by viewing the 
marred image in the looking-glass of the past, 
but by contemplating the glorious form which 
is foreshadowed in the mirror of the future.* 

This was what James had himself found by 
experience. He was doing the same prosaic 
work which he had ever done; but he was do- 
ing it much better. The reason was not that 
his eye was more intently fixed on the hour, 
but that he had come to see something beyond 
the hour. He had received a promise of pro- 
motion. There had opened before his vision 
a prospect of green fields. There had sounded 
in his ear a strain of far-off music. There had 
been wafted to his sense a perfume of sweet 
flowers. The vision and the music and the per- 



JAMES THE SOFTENED 231 

fume had passed into his soul and thence into 
his hand. They had given a new energy to his 
mindy and that energy had streamed through 
his body. It had made him a better workman, a 
better servant, a better organiser. It had given 
him more speed, more concentration, more skill. 
He had found that the things of the spirit 
helped the things of the flesh. 

Take another passage from this remarkable 
letter, and you will see again how James had 
changed his mind about the antagonism between 
prosaic work and ecstatic contemplation. The 
words to which I allude are these, ' The fervent 
prayer of a righteous man is powerful by its 
working.' The idea is that inward trust helps 
the outward hand. Let me illustrate what he 
means. He himself gives us a definition of 
what he understands by religion — ' Pure relig- 
ion and undefiled before our God and Father 
is this, to visit the fatherless and the wid- 
ows in their affliction and to keep unspotted 
from the world. ' Now, as a mere outward act, 
this is a most difficult thing to do. If our view 
is limited to the earthly horizon, this visiting 




232 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

is to us a positive pain. To come into contact 
with scenes of misery, of poverty, of destitu- 
tion, is a soul-depressing thing if one has no 
comfort to bring. Outside of religion, one could 
only continue such visiting by systematically 
hardening his heart. All pessimism hardens; 
despair is ever benumbing. And because it 
is benumbing, it is unfavourable to work. It 
may visit afflicted widows and orphans, but it 
will be as one visits the tombstones — with the 
conviction that nothing can be done. This was 
what James felt in the days when his heart 
was unsoftened. He found that he could only 
preach resignation, submission, sullen silence 
— ^that he could not lift by one hair-breadth the 
stone from the sepulchre door. But when as a 
Christian he began to pray, his heart was soft- 
ened with hope. When there came to him an 
inward trust that these children of affliction were 
already folded in the arms of a heavenly Father 
who would by no means let them go until He 
had blessed them, then it was that James felt 
the impulse to action. As the ice of despair 
melted, the river of life began to show its pos- 



JAMES THE SOFTENED 233 

sibilities. As a gleam appeared in the sky, a 
new energy came to the arm. He had heart to 
toil for these people, spirit to work for them, 
nerve to plan for them; the fervent trust had 
inspired effectual service. He felt what every 
sick -nurse feels — that hope is a dynamic power, 
that the skill of the hand is aided by the light 
in the heart, and that the crushing labour of to- 
day is shared and alleviated by the strength 
received from to-morrow. 

James, then, through the softening contact 
of Christianity, is conscious of an increased power 
of work. But according to this singular letter, 
there is another thing he is conscious of — ^an 
increased power of toleration. He says, *The 
wisdom that is from above is first pure, then 
peaceable, gentle and easy to be intreated.' 
There was a time when he would have reasoned 
in an opposite way. He would have said, * The 
wisdom from above is pure, and, because it is 
pure, it is uncompromising to all other sys- 
tems.' What has effected the change.? That 
the change is effected, is manifest. It is not 
only breathed in his letter; it is evinced in 



234 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

his life. This man whose spring was so sombre, 
so cold, so forbidding, is in his autumn the har- 
binger of peace. It is to him that we are in- 
debted for the first oil thrown on the waters in 
the great controversy between the Gentile and 
the Jew. It is to him that we owe the decision 
of that peaceful Council at Jerusalem where 
a kindly hand was laid upon the contending 
parties and a conciliatory message to each healed 
their mutual wounds. Nay, it is to him, along 
with Peter, that in the last result we attribute 
the recognition by the narrow Church in Judea 
of the broad apostle Paul.^ All this indicates 
a softening of the first austerity, an advance in 
the spirit of toleration. But whence came this 
advance.^ Whence proceeded this increased 
power of toleration.? From the same source 
as his increased power of work — ^from the spirit 
of Christian hope. 

For, I have no hesitation in saying that tol- 
eration as well as work is facilitated by hope. 
I know that the opposite is the common view. 
The popular opinion is that intolerance is pro- 
^ Gal. i. i8 and 19 



JAMES THE SOFTENED 235 

portionate to assurance. There are not wanting 
those who say that tolerance has advanced side 
by side with doubt and that we have become 
less rigid as we have become more unbelieving. 
I cannot accept this doctrine. I believe intol- 
erance to be always the fruit of fear, and its 
opposite to be always the fruit of confidence. 
Indifference may spring from unbelief ; but indif- 
ference has no more to do with toleration than 
with bigotry — it is the absence of all feeling. 
Toleration, on the other hand, implies a very 
profound feeling — a sense that all will be right. 
The tolerant man is the man who stands amid 
the storm and refuses by violence to suppress 
the winds and the waves. He is not afraid 
of the winds and the waves. The writer of 
the Apocalypse says of the Heavenly City, 
'The gates of it shall not be shut at all by 
day, for there shall be no night there.' It is 
so with every confident human heart; night- 
lessness produces liberality. The heart which 
sees no shadow throws open its gates to all opin- 
ions. It fears not to give an entrance to senti- 
ments not its own. Its breadth comes from its 



236 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

clearness, not from its cloud. Abiding faith 
makes abiding charity. Not from doubt, not 
from uncertainty, does toleration flow. It 
comes from a sight of the crystal river proceed- 
ing from the throne of God. The man who 
has entered by the door into the sheepfold has 
liberty to come out at pleasure and to bring 
pasture from other folds. The words of the 
Master remain valid for all time, and cogent for 
all experience, ' The truth shall make you free. ' 

LORD, in these latter days ours is the lot 
of James; we are all children of the 
autumn. We have not seen the springtime. 
We were not among those who gazed upon Thy 
visible glory. I have often regretted this. I 
have often been sad that I was *bom out of 
due time.' I have lamented that I have not 
looked upon Thy face or heard Thy voice or 
felt the clasp of Thy hand — that Thou hast 
walked in my garden only when the leaves were 
falling. And to me in such mood the story 
of Thy disciple James brings the sweetest of 
messages. He also was too late for the spring 



JAMES THE SOFTENED 237 

— too late by his own fault. Yet, spite of his 
lateness and spite of his blame, his autumn was 
bright and glorious. Thou wert at his fire- 
side, and he saw Thee not; but he felt Thy 
presence when the cloud had received Thee out 
of his sight. I thank Thee for that picture in 
the Gallery, O Lord; it speaks to me. It 
gives me hope, courage, expectation. It tells 
me that Thy gifts are not limited to the morn- 
ing. I too may have an autumn glory. Though 
inland far I be, though I have never seen the 
ocean wave, though I hear not the water of life 
breaking on the shore, though the breath of 
the brine has passed me by and the sparkle of 
the spray has ignored me, I too may find Thee 
in the silent field. Come to my autumn, O 
Christ; come to my inland life! Come to the 
leaves that are falling; come to the woods that 
are thinning; come to the flowers that are fad- 
ing! Bring Thine Eden to my evening. Thy 
Nazareth to my night ! Kindle my western sky 
with the light of the eastern star! Speak hope 
to my waning years ! Sing songs to my falter- 
ing feet! Plant promises in my autumn soil! 



238 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

Make chariots of the clouds that hide Thee! 
Deliver Thy beatitudes standing on the Nebo 
of my declining days! Then to me, as to Thy 
disciple, there shall be light at evening time. 



CHAPTER XII 

BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 

I AM now coming to the figure of a great preach- 
er of the early Christian Church — one who in 
his day enjoyed the rare privilege of being the 
friend of opposite parties. I speak of the man 
who was known to his contemporaries and who 
is known to posterity by the name of Barnabas. 
The name was not his own. It was really a 
term of endearment meaning * the son of conso- 
lation, ' or, as it might be rendered, * the son of 
exhortation. ' It signified that in the opinion of 
men his preaching of Christian truth was of a 
most helpful nature, pouring balm on the wound- 
ed and giving strength to the weary. The 
name of love has stuck to him. It has painted 
him to all ages as a man of supreme kindness, 
of much tolerance, of wide charity — eager for 

the comfort of the distressed and impressed by 
239 



240 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

the duties which he owed to the poor. A rich 
man himself, he felt that a trust had been 
committed to him; a preacher of Christ's Gos- 
pel, he felt that a responsibility had been laid 
upon him; a member of the prophetic school, 
he felt that he must help to hasten the march 
to the Promised Land. 

This is the second of the great Christian 
preachers we have met in the Gallery. The 
first was John the Baptist. Nothing can ex- 
ceed the difference between these two repre- 
sentatives of pulpit eloquence. The Baptist is 
immured in a Jewish desert; Barnabas grows 
up in the free air of Cyprus Isle and by the blue 
waters of a far-sounding sea. The Baptist is all 
fire; Barnabas is all persuasion. The Baptist 
would break down the stubborn strongholds; 
Barnabas would bind the broken hearts. The 
Baptist proclaims the terrors of judgment; Bar- 
nabas points to the joys of Paradise. The Bap- 
tist frightens by the famine and the swine- 
husks; Barnabas tempts by the ring and the 
robe and the welcome. 

From what sin was such a good man con- 



BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 241 

verted? — that is the question which rises to the 
lips as we gaze on his face in the Gallery. Re- 
member, I have no historical information on 
the subject. I have never seen the primitive 
Barnabas; when he appears before me, he is 
already a leader of men. Is there any other 
mode of discovering his past? I think there is. 
Let us look at the man as he flashes before us 
in the Great Gallery at the height of his Chris- 
tian influence and in the blaze of his Christian 
fame. Let us ask if even in this white apparel 
we can discover the remains of any stain, if 
even on this fair face we can find the traces 
of a scar. If we can, you may be sure that 
we have reached the beginnings of the man — 
have put our hand on what was once a black 
mark, have laid our finger on what was origi- 
nally an ugly sore. 

Now, beautiful as the character of Barnabas 
is, we are permitted to see in it one flaw; and 
we are entitled to regard this flaw as a remain- 
ing trace of that which in the old days was his 
besetting sin. What is it? I should be dis- 
posed to describe it as a particular kind of pride 
16 



242 THE REPRESENTAXrV^E MEN 

— the pride of race. I say, * a particular kind ' of 
pride. I would sharply distinguish it, for ex- 
ample, from personal pride or egotism — that 
kind of pride to which the evangelist John in 
his early days was subject. The pride of race 
is compatible with personal humility — it may 
exist side by side with a sense of indi\'idual 
unworthiness. The Jew, indeed, was apt to 
sink himself in his country — to become person- 
ally humble in proportion as he grew patriot- 
ically proud. Again, I would distinguish this 
pride from the pride of wealth. Barnabas was 
rich, but he was not proud of his riches. In the 
ver}^ first recorded scene of his life we find him 
selling his land and giving the money to the 
Church. But is that mcompatible with the 
pride of race! Would it be thought very ex- 
travagant if I said that it was the pride of race 
helped him to do so } Barnabas was a Le\4te — 
and the Levites, as individuals, had originally 
no land; they were forbidden to inherit it, 
and they were at first too poor to purchase it. 
If, as wealth accumulated, they acquired it by 
purchase, a man like Barnabas might well feel 



BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 243 

that the ancestral glory had been departed 
from — that the law had been violated in spirit 
while preserved in the letter; and he might well 
resolve that, in his case at least, there should 
be a return to the life of his forefathers. I do 
not disparage his charity — God forbid! I do 
not minimise his goodness of heart — that was of 
the purest. But I do say that in the achieving 
of this good thing ancestral pride may well 
have co-operated, and that his personal life 
may have been humbled by the very conscious- 
ness of his national dignity. 

Unfortunately for Barnabas, it was not al- 
ways to good things that this pride led him. 
Perhaps I should say, 'fortunately.' A man 
only learns his defect in being chastened — in 
finding that the ways in which it leads are not 
ways of pleasantness nor its paths paths of 
peace. If it always brought him into pastures 
green, he might come to reverence it. But when 
it pushes him into quagmires, drives him among 
thorns, throws him down in stony places, 
wanders him amid labyrinths, then the man 
cries, 'There is something wrong here — some- 



244 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

thing which incommodes me, hurts me, retards 
me, and which at all hazards I must get rid 
of.' That is the Christian history of Barna- 
bas. It is the history of a man who has been 
transformed from a Jew into a follower of the 
Cross, but who has carried over with him a 
remnant of that old ancestral pride which was 
so prevalent among his countrymen. It is 
the history of that process of chastening by 
which this remnant of an old sin was assailed, 
by which the man was made to feel that the 
spirit of caste was not the spirit of consolation. 
In no other light can we read with profit the 
life of Barnabas. Looked at from the purely 
secular side, it is a very sad life. It begins in 
glorious morning; it closes in a cloudy after- 
noon. It opens with music and dancing; it 
concludes amid the silence. Its rise is hailed 
with plaudits; its setting is marked by obscur- 
ity. Very sad, I say, from a secular point of 
view is this life of Barnabas. But from a 
Christian point of view it reads very differently. 
If you believe that this decline is a chasten- 
ing, if you are convinced that the branches 



BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 245 

lopped from the tree were useless branches, if 
you feel that the adversity was a revelation 
that there was still something defective in this 
man's soul, then will the afternoon of Barnabas 
be better than his morning and the shadows 
of his obscurity more healthy than the glare of 
his fame. Let us briefly follow the stream of 
the narrative. 

When the great preacher was in the blaze 
of his glory, there came to Jerusalem another 
and a rising preacher who promised in the 
future to be great. It was young Saul of Tar- 
sus, who after a bitter persecution of Christian- 
ity had been converted to the faith he maligned 
and had taken the name of Paul. There had 
burst upon him the conviction that his special 
call was not to his own ' countrymen, but to the 
Gentiles; it was among these that the sun of 
his fame rose. From the standpoint of the Jew 
this was not a very promising beginning. That 
a scion of the race of Israel should embrace 
a faith which professed to be cosmopolitan, 
was bad enough; that he should single out the 
Gentiles for a special interest, was maddening. 



246 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

Even the Jewish Christians were not prepared 
to hail such an advocate. They had always been 
accustomed to claim the largest room; here 
was a man that would dispossess them of their 
privilege ! Might not this be only another form 
of the persecution — an attempt to destroy Christ 
by denying His special relation to the land of 
their fathers ! Was this a man to be trust- 
ed! Were his antecedents such as made him 
an object of trust! Had he not been a bitter 
enemy of their faith ! Was a change so sudden 
as his likely to be real, or, if real, likely to be 
permanent! Were they not standing on the 
brink of a precipice; let them beware! 

And so, when this young preacher came to 
Jerusalem, he was received coldly. Men shrank 
from him as from a pestilence. There are 
times when nothing can raise a man in public 
estimation but the support of a powerful hand. 
The man who is under disgrace, under suspi- 
cion, under the ban of the multitude, will prob- 
ably lie there until he is lifted by some one 
higher than the multitude. But when that 
happens, the influence of the one will in all 



BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 247 

likelihood outweigh the influence of the many. 
So was it with Paul. For a time he lay pros- 
trate in obscurity — shunned and feared by his 
Christian countrymen. Suddenly, a big hand 
touched him, and two big arms lifted him up, 
and a big voice proclaimed, * This man is our 
brother.' The hand, the arms, the voice, were 
those of Barnabas. It was exactly the thing 
we should expect Barnabas to do. He was by 
nature a consoler. The sounds which first 
reached his ear were ever the plaints of weak- 
ness. To be downtrodden, to have everybody 
against you, to be despised and rejected by your 
fellow-men, was quite sufficient to place you 
within sight of the sympathy of Barnabas. 
His large heart took in the desolate Paul and 
made a way for him in the world. He led him 
to the College of Apostles. He brought him 
to the President of that college— James the 
Lord's brother, to win whose influence was 
the key to the whole position. He told of 
Paul's zeal, of his ardour, of his success. He 
lost no opportunity of bringing his talents into 
notice. When Paul had gone back to Tarsus 



248 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

and Barnabas had gone to electrify with his 
wisdom the Church at Antioch, the older preach- 
er was sad because he had all the glory. He 
wanted the young man to share it; he deter- 
mined that he should share it. He went to 
Tarsus and brought him to the scene of tri- 
umph. He gave him a place among the Chris- 
tian workers. He went about continually in his 
company, that men might say, 'There go Bar- 
nabas and Paul.' He knew well the power of 
association — how a tarnished name if linked 
with a great name may lose its tarnish; and 
he resolved that Paul should reap the advantage 
of such a union. 

This was generous, this was noble. But 
what if the association should be inverted! 
What if in process of time the conjunction 
should be, not * Barnabas and Paul, ' but * Paul 
and Barnabas ' ! It is quite a common thing to 
see a mature preacher take a young preacher 
under his patronage, and in a brief space to 
behold the young man becoming the leader. 
In the present instance this actually happened. 
For a while the name of Barnabas precedes, 



BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 249 

and that of Paul follows; then there is a change 
—the order is ' Paul and Barnabas. ' The rea- 
son is plain. Paul has revealed himself as the 
greater power. I do not say, as the greater 
man. If Christian greatness be the spirit of 
goodness, Barnabas must ever remain one of 
the loftiest human souls. But if Barnabas was 
unsurpassed as a man, he was surpassed as a 
power. It was not long before a superior force 
made itself felt in the little band — it was the 
mind of Saul of Tarsus. He entered as a 
dependent; he ended as a leader. He came 
to the front by the sheer force of intellect. 
His mind was in some respects a contrast to 
that of Barnabas. Barnabas was entirely prac- 
tical; Paul was, before all things, speculative. 
Barnabas was naturally calm; Paul was gen- 
erally on fire. Barnabas was methodical; Paul 
moved on wings. Barnabas was an organiser; 
Paul was an inspirer. Barnabas was a man of 
counsel; Paul was a man of genius. It was 
inevitable that the stronger force should in 
the long-run be the dominant force; it was 
certain from the outset that the leading spirit 



250 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

of the company would be, not Barnabas, but 
Paul. 

But the question which I ask is this, What 
effect would this have upon Barnabas? Would 
it touch his jealousy? Never — that, at least, 
may be confidently affirmed. This man was in- 
capable of jealousy. It had no part in his na- 
ture, which was essentially free from indi\'idual 
self-seeking. But if you ask me if it would 
touch his pride of race, then, looking to what 
happened afterwards, I must give a very dif- 
ferent answer. I think this is the ver)' element 
in Barnabas which the superior deference paid 
to Paul would touch. It is true, Paul was as 
Jexsash as himself and had a lineage as good 
as his own. But those of whom Paul was ex- 
clusively the missionary were, in the view of 
Barnabas, without lineage — the Gentiles had no 
descent from Abraham. WTiy should one who 
represented the Gentiles alone, be seated on 
a higher throne than one who, however tolerant 
and however eager to make Gentile converts, 
had been originally the representative of an 
older and more venerable line — of that Church 



BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 251 

which professed to be the latest flower of 
Judaism and the fulfilment of her Messianic 
dreams! Was it right, was it well, that it 
should be so! Ought not the first branch to 
be the cherished branch! Had it not been 
deemed in days of yore the proudest of all dig- 
nities to belong to the primitive fold; why had 
the time come when men were turning aside 
from this reverence to crown one who served 
the fold of a stranger ! 

I think that, parallel with his own declining 
influence, this was the ever-deepening thought 
of Barnabas. It was not a jealous feeling, it 
was not even a personal feeling; it was the 
pride of race. He thought of himself, not as 
an individual, but as the member of a venerable 
community which, in the mind even of the 
Gentile, should ever have the highest place of 
reverence. Yet, impersonal as it was, the feel- 
ing was the remnant of a garment which ought 
to have been discarded, and which, because it 
was not discarded, became a source of discord. 
It was not long before the cloud brooding over 
the heart was made visible in the sky. It 



252 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

first gathered at Perga. John Mark, the favour- 
ite nephew of Barnabas, deserted the Gentile 
band and went back to the Mother Church at 
Jerusalem. In the next chapter I shall speak 
of him separately, and I only allude to him 
now with a view to illustrate the attitude of 
Barnabas. But I think his conduct has a bear- 
ing on the attitude of Barnabas. When I re- 
member that even after the separation the 
uncle and nephew still remained on excellent 
terms, when I recollect how amply it was re- 
vealed in the future that the elder man had con- 
doned the deed of the younger, I cannot avoid 
the conclusion that in the mind of that elder 
man there had risen a shadow of displeasure 
which had dimmed the glory of the morning 
and spread a chill through the once-genial air. 

But the shadow was to deepen, the chill was 
to increase. By and by there was a conference 
summoned at Antioch.' It was to be a meet- 
ing for purposes of Church-union. All parties 
were to be represented; all parties came. The 
Gentile Christians were probably first in the field 
* So I interpret Galatians ii. 11-14. 



BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 253 

— ^Antioch being a Gentile city. Then would 
come the Hellenists — the men who, though now 
Grecianised, had either been originally pure 
Jews or had sprung from Jewish ancestors; 
and these sat down beside the purely Gentile 
converts. Then appeared the Jewish Chris- 
tians; and they too sat down with the Hellen- 
ist and the Jew. At last came deputies from 
that ecclesiastical board of administration over 
which James presided — men who, however lib- 
eral, were full of Jewish memories and deep in 
the caste of nationality. And when these came, 
they would not sit down with the mass. They 
were willing to make copious concessions to 
the Gentiles, but not to give their company; 
they could patronise, but not fraternise. They 
held themselves apart. They kept in an iso- 
lated corner. They constituted themselves an 
inner court of the tabernacle and allowed the 
party of Paul to remain outside. Gradually, 
an effect was produced by this attitude. The 
Jewish Christians began to steal away from the 
seats they had taken and to form independent 
groups. Peter quietly removed himself — but 



254 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

simply from a return of his native timidity. 
There was worse to follow — Barnabas removed 
himself. This was not timidit}% nor was it the 
impulse of the hour. It must have been the 
result of a long process of dissatisfaction. 
Barnabas ^^s not an impulsive man and he 
was not a passionate man. What he did he did 
from reflection — a reflection which, though bit- 
ter, was dictated, I believe, by an erroneous 
sense of duty. I think it was really at ///';« 
that Paul levelled his rebuke. He addressed 
Peter, but only because he was the wtual 
chairman of the company. It was Barnabas 
that made him sore. It was Barnabas that 
awakened his astonishment and indignation. It 
was Barnabas that quickened him to the frailty 
of human nature and to the inveterate and 
wellnigh in\incible weakness that dwells in the 
heart of man. 

At last the cloud descended in a stream of 
piteous rain. In process of time Paul proposed 
that he and Barnabas should make a second 
missionary tour over the ground they had al- 
ready trodden. Barnabas, you vdW obser\^e, has 



BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 255 

now ceased to be the suggester of the Gospel 
programme; its ordering has passed into the 
hand of Paul. Yet the former leader is willing 
here to be the follower. He consents to go, 
provided Paul will allow John Mark to accom- 
pany them. Paul emphatically refuses. Had not 
this man deserted the standard! Had he not 
preferred another field to the field so dear to 
Paul's heart! Were any family considerations 
to alleviate the blame of such conduct! John 
Mark must be viewed, not as the nephew of 
Barnabas, but as a neutral party! He must be 
treated on his own merits — not as the scion of 
an old house, but as if he were an individual 
unbefriended, obscure, alone! Judged by that 
test, he had been found wanting! There was 
a rent in his garment which could not be 
patched over with family colours; let the man 
abide where he had elected to be. So said 
Paul ; and it was the last straw. For then the 
storm broke. Barnabas retorted; Paul re- 
plied. The waters pent up for months burst 
their barriers and rushed into the open. The 
quarrel which began with being vicarious be- 



2S6 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

came personal; mutual recriminations came, 
and words ran high. At last that happened 
which in such cases often happens — the less 
capable combatant left the room and slammed 
the door. That was in effect what Barnabas 
did. He threw up his work. He abandoned 
the mission. He bade farewell to the scene 
of his labours, to Paul, to the comrades of his 
midday. He withdrew into his shell — Cyprus. 
He saw the drama of a great career fade before 
him; and his life which promised to fill the 
world was confined within the limits of a little 
isle. There was again a change in the Gos- 
pel partnership. First it had been * Barnabas 
and Paul ' ; then it was * Paul and Barnabas ' ; 
henceforth it was to be ' Paul ' alone. 

Who was wrong in the reszi/l of this quar- 
rel } Undoubtedly Barnabas. I waive altogether 
the subject of John Mark's treatment. It is 
a question which is irrelevant; and it ought to 
have been a question subordinate to Gospel in- 
terests. Why should Barnabas have allowed 
a family consideration to outweigh his work for 
Christ! Why should he have diminished that 



BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 257 

work for any discourtesy paid to his house! I 
believe this last act of his was a final judg- 
ment on that lingering weakness of his life — 
the pride of race. I feel sure that before long 
it was accepted as such by himself — ^as his 
revelation of the pitfall in the way. Why do I 
think that he lived to regret the step he had 
taken.? So far as I know, he and Paul never 
met again; what makes me think that Barna- 
bas came to shake hands in spirit.'* There are 
two things which lead me to that conclusion. 
One is the fact that, long years afterwards, an 
extravagantly Pauline letter appeared bearing 
the name of Barnabas. Its genuineness is out- 
wardly very well attested; internally, the pro- 
duction is thought very unlike him. The rea- 
son of the supposed unlikeness is just the fact 
that he is so unfettered in his treatment of the 
Jewish scriptures — one would say he had passed 
over to the Gentiles. Altogether, I do not my- 
self think that he is the author of that letter; 
but I do think that the fact of its being attrib- 
uted to him shows where, in his last years, his 

mind was known to lie. It shows that in the 
17 



258 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

opinion of his contemporaries his life, as it 
neared the setting sun, came nearer and ever 
nearer to that ocean of universal love in which 
Paul bathed all the day — where there was 
neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian nor Roman, 
bond nor free — where the only flag unfurled 
was the flag of humanity. 

But there is another reason why I think 
the closing years of Barnabas were years of 
reconciliation. The nephew came back to Paul 
— came back under circumstances which made 
the sacrifice all on his side and the gain en- 
tirely on Paul's. As the subject will recur 
hereafter I shall not dwell upon it here. The 
one point is that the nephew did come back — 
came back at a time when love alone could 
have brought him. And when we consider that 
after Paul had rejected his services he had gone 
to live with his uncle, his act of reconcilia- 
tion throws back its light upon Barnabas. It 
shows clearly that the spirit of Barnabas had 
been sweetened by the years. If the impression 
left by the uncle on the nephew's mind had 
oeen one of bitterness, he would have shunned 



BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 259 

Paul for evermore. We do not love those by 
whom a near and dear relative has been stung, 
even where the sting has been justly implanted. 
The return of John Mark proves to my mind 
that from the breast of Barnabas the sting had 
been long extracted, and that in its room had 
been planted the spirit of reconciliation. It 
proves that, in his sphere of comparative im- 
prisonment in the isle of Cyprus, the heart of 
Barnabas, at least, had burst its chain. Though 
no longer he was aiding Paul with the hand, \ 
his soul was going with him. His sympathies 
were breaking forth from Cyprus and following 
his companion of early years — rejoicing in his 
triumphs, sharing in his griefs, participating 
in his burdens, joining in his prayers. The 
outward union to him personally was not to be 
restored ; but the union in the spirit was alread}' 
complete, and to his kinsman he left the clasp 
ing of the hands. 



T ORD, let not the sun go down upon my 
^-^ wrath! Life is too short for quarrels. 
Yet it is not because life is short that I would 



26o THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

have peace. It is because eternity is long. 
How strange my old quarrels look in the light 
of vanished years! Methinks they will look 
stranger still in the light of Thine eternity. 
I am ambitious now, and I shall be ambitious 
then; but the things for which I am ambitious 
now are not the things for which I shall be am- 
bitious then. Now I strive to get; then I 
shall strive to give. Now I seek possession; 
then I shall try to be dispossessed. Now I 
covet the uppermost seat; then I shall descend 
the stair. Now I select the best robe; then I 
shall choose the servant's form. I see Paul 
and Barnabas standing before Thy presence, 
and there is still a strife between them. But 
the cause of strife is changed — Paul wishes 
Barnabas to be first, and Barnabas is eager 
to remain second; they wonder at their old 
quarrel in the light of Thy throne. Reveal 
that light to me, O Lord ! In my hour of quar- 
rel, in the hour when I strive to be first, give 
me a glimpse of the soul's last judgment on 
itself — its reversed judgment! Let me see 
Cain rejoicing over the acceptance of Abel's 



BARNABAS THE CHASTENED 261 

sacrifice! Let me see Lot repudiating the 
richer share! Let me see Sarah making a 
home for Ishmael! Let me see Jacob refusing 
his brother's birthright! Let me see Joseph 
exalting his brethren in his dreams! Let me 
see David take Uriah's place in the battle! 
Let me see Jonah intent on sparing Nineveh! 
Let me see Herod exulting in the sustenance 
of the babes of Bethlehem! Then shall the 
light of eternity arrest the strife of time; Paul 
and Barnabas shall stand side by side. 



CHAPTER XIII 



MARK THE STEADIED 



On that night in which Jesus was betrayed, 
all who were with Him in the Garden forsook 
Him and fled. But there was one who fol- 
lowed Him though he had not been with Him 
in the Garden. When the soldiers came out to 
the public road leading their august prisoner, an 
obscure young man did what the others had 
feared to do — took a few steps in company with 
Jesus. It was only a few steps — his strength 
was not equal to the strain; when the soldiers 
laid hands upon his garment he left it in 
their hands and fled like the rest. Yet he had 
gone a yard or two further than the men of 
the Garden in the following of Jesus. He had at 
least made a movement forward, not backward ; 
and, by that short walk, 'he, being dead, 

yet speaketh.' I doubt not that the recording 
262 



MARK THE STEADIED 263 

angel wrote down his name, or rather his name- 
lessness, as a proof that the obscure may often 
surpass the illustrious, and that he expressed 
the sense of his superiority to the watchers in 
the Garden by affixing the inscription, * A day*s 
march nearer home. ' 

Now, in the view of tradition this young man 
was Mark the Evangelist. It is in his Gospel 
the story is told, and he has been thought by 
many to be speaking of himself. Let it be un- 
derstood, once for all, that when I say ' Mark 
the Evangelist' I mean every man who in the 
New Testament is mentioned by the name of 
Mark — whether it be John Mark or the Mark 
whom Paul summons to Rome or the Mark who 
resides with Peter in Babylon. I prejudge no 
question of criticism as to matters of fact. But 
when the question is simply, What is meant 
to be conveyed by the artist.? I have no hesita- 
tion in accepting the belief that in the design of 
the Gallery they are all one and the same per- 
son. My whole province here is to expound 
the Gallery. I shall start therefore with the 
assumption that in the Gallery of the New 



264 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

Testament there is but one figure of the name 
— a figure which passes through a variety of 
changes in its transition from youth to maturity 
— which rises in the heart of Jerusalem and is 
lost to view in the heart of Rome — ^which is 
known to its contemporaries as the nephew of 
Barnabas and to all posterity as the writer of 
a Gospel. We shall endeavour to weave into 
unity these various threads which at first seem 
separate and independent, and to present the 
picture of this man as the representative of a 
distinct idea and the embodiment of a special 
thought. 

Whether John Mark be or be not the young 
man described at the egress from the Garden, 
there can be no doubt that the description suits 
him. We see there the picture of a splendid 
advance and a sudden recoil. That is exactly 
the portrait of Mark. If I were asked to indi- 
cate his leading feature, I should define him as 
*the unsteady man.' Let me explain precisely 
what I mean. It is quite a common thing among 
ourselves to say of a young man, * Unfortunate- 
ly, he is not steady. ' But when we say that, we 



MARK THE STEADIED 265 

always imply one thing — that he is not steady 
in well-doing. We generally apply the phrase 
to one who, after walking awhile in pastures 
green, is found staggering with drink in street 
and lane. That is certainly an interruption of 
steadiness; but it is not the unsteadiness of 
which I here speak, nor that which I attribute 
to John Mark. In the broad and strict sense of 
the word, unsteadiness has no more to do with 
ill -doing than with well-doing. An unsteady 
young man is a young man who is unable to keep 
to one definite purpose — who in a brief space 
deserts it for another. So far as this quality is 
concerned, it matters nothing whether he wavers 
between the good and the bad, between the bad 
and the bad, or between the good and the good ; 
each of these cases alike implies an irreso- 
lute will. Many a man turns from one occupa- 
tion to another with perfect honesty and per- 
fect conviction. He may begin by trying to 
write history; then he may attempt science; 
then he may aspire to poetry ; then he may take 
up the work of the artist. We call such an 
unsteady man. Not one of the conflicting aims 



266 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

is bad — they are each good and noble. But the 
fact that in the man's mind they are conflict- 
ing, proves him to be unsteady. I do not think 
that John Mark ever deserted a good cause for 
a bad; the point is that he was constantly de- 
serting one cause for another. This is why I 
call him ' Mark the unsteady. ' He stands as 
a representative of the man who does not know 
his own mind, the unstable man, the wavering 
man. His impulses are all for good; but they 
are not long directed toward the same good; it 
is the blue to-day, the green to-morrow, the 
red next day. He never sinks to. the degraded; 
but he has no permanent interest in any particu- 
lar cause which is sublime. 

When we first meet the name of John Mark, 
he is already a Christian. He was in an ad- 
mirable atmosphere for becoming a Christian. 
He belonged to a Christian family. His uncle 
was Barnabas. His mother was Mary of Jeru- 
salem — a woman of worldly means and unworld- 
ly piety. Her house in the Jewish metropolis 
was a place of rendezvous — a salon where met 
from time to time the leaders of the faith. 



MARK THE STEADIED 267 

Sometimes it was for purposes of prayer, some- 
times for exhortation, sometimes for social in- 
tercourse. Amid the amenities of this circle 
young Mark enjoyed great advantages; he 
learned the nature of Christianity almost from 
the fountainhead, and he saw it represented in 
its adaptation to varied minds. The man whom 
he first met was the man who bound the earli- 
est cord round his heart; it was Simon Peter. 
The Master had given to Peter the key to many 
human doors; and the door of Mark's spirit 
opened to him of its own accord. There was 
something in the natures of these men which 
drew them into harmony. They had both natu- 
rally the same mental disease — ^a wavering will. 
The causes of the malady were of course very 
different. Peter was originally timid and was 
frightened by the first cloud; Mark was con- 
stitutionally volatile and was drawn elsewhere 
by the second sunbeam. Yet the fact of a com- 
mon disease made a common sympathy, while 
the difference of its cause created a power of 
mutual help. If the wavering in each case had 
come from the same source, Peter and Mark 



268 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

might have been sympathisers; but they never 
could have been helpers, for mutual help de- 
mands that each should possess an element which 
is lacking m the other. The blended likeness 
and difference of these men united them on 
two sides. 

Then, by and by, there came to Jerusalem 
the man who was to become the other figure 
of the apostolic age — Paul of Tarsus. He was 
brought by Barnabas as a fellow-worker in the 
relieving of a great famine. Here Mark for 
the first time met Paul. I do not think the man 
of Tarsus made as much impression upon him as 
Peter had done. There was little resemblance 
in their characters. If Mark was wavering, 
Paul was inflexible. If Mark had many objects 
of attraction, Paul had only one. If Mark was 
drawn aside by passing sentiment, Paul was 
bound by the chain of a permanent love. Nor 
do I think that at this stage the cause of Paul 
was the cause of Mark. I believe that origi- 
nally the heart of the latter was not with the 
Gentiles, but with the Jews. It is not often that 
the younger generation is less liberal than the 



MARK THE STEADIED 269 

older; but I think Mark was far more con- 
servative than his uncle Barnabas. They had 
lived in a different environment. Barnabas had 
dwelt in the comparatively free air of Cyprus, 
and had seen many phases of many minds. 
He was in the position of the man of travel. 
He had come to find that there must be allowed 
a certain amount of latitude for human thought, 
and that we cannot expect all men to be shaped 
in one mould. Mark, on the other hand, was 
a child of Jerusalem. With Jerusalem were 
linked his earliest, and therefore his fondest, 
associations. It was the home of his happiest 
years, the scene of his most cherished memo- 
ries. Religion itself had come to him there, 
and had come in a joyous dress — wreathed with 
social interest and decked with colours gay. 
Jerusalem was very dear to Mark, and anything 
that disparaged her, anything that would tend 
to put her in the second place, must have been 
strongly distasteful to him. The enthusiasm for 
the Gentile world was not to him the most joy- 
ful of sounds. 

Nevertheless, Barnabas requested that his 



270 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

nephew should accompany him in his mission- 
ary tour with Paul. I think the proposal came 
from Barnabas. I think he was afraid that 
the young man was getting inured to a narrow 
atmosphere. If Paid had made the request 
it is probable it would have been refused. 
But when it came from the uncle, when it was 
dictated by solicitude for Mark's mental enlarge- 
ment, when it was an appeal for companionship 
by one for whom he cherished an affection and 
who cherished an affection for him, it spoke 
to impulses outside of religion and impulses 
which were fitted to strike the youthful mind. 
Mark said, ' I will go. ' 

Accordingly, when Paul and Barnabas depart- 
ed from Jerusalem they took Mark with them. 
It was a very unpromising beginning for a mis- 
sionary career. No man should enter on such 
a career with any motive less than zeal for the 
cause. Every step of Mark's journey increased 
his homesick longing for the Christian Church 
of Jerusalem. I know that his discontent has 
been attributed to lower motives. Men have 
spoken of him as lazy, idle, somnolent, unwill- 



MARK THE STEADIED 271 

ing to put his hand to the plough lest it should 
be soiled, averse to expose his life lest it should 
be sacrificed. A more ungenerous verdict was 
never pronounced — it is refuted by his whole 
life. Mark was not a selfish man ; he was never 
an idle man; in his later years he was the re- 
verse of a timid man — and these are the only 
years when he had a real chance of displaying 
himself. His bane was that he was a man of 
two ideas — not of one. His was not a struggle 
between the love of action and the love of ease. 
It was a struggle with the temptation to act 
in different ways either of which would in itself 
be good. It was in the present instance a 
struggle whether to abide with Paul or to re- 
turn to Peter. A man of steady will would have 
battled down the temptation to return. But 
Jerusalem the Golden, the Jerusalem of his 
youth, the Jerusalem of his earliest joys, was 
too strong for him ; it kept a corner in his heart 
and would not let him go. 

So, when the little company arrived at Per- 
ga, Mark suddenly disappeared. I know not in 
what manner he effected his departure — whether 



272 THE REPRESEXTATRT MEN 

he simply abandoned them or made an excuse 
for absence or wrote a respectful letter of resig- 
nation. It may be safely said that nothing 
could confer dignity on his departure. Paul 
could only receive it as a slight to the cause 
which was dearest to his heart — z. slight all the 
more impressive and all the more stinging be- 
cause it came from the nephew of the vQry man 
who had been his patron in the hour of need; 
it was apt to make men say, ' If Paul's own 
friends desert him, we need not wonder at what 
his enemies do.' Mark went back to Jerusa- 
lem. He was probably received with contempt 
— as a rolling stone. A rolling stone he cer- 
tainly was; but it was not rolling downhill. 
His was really a case of rehgious homesickness. 
He was attached to the Church of his fathers. 
Their city was to him the sacred city, their tem- 
ple the model and pattern of the house of God. 
His heart could not beat in unison with a move- 
ment which centred round other cities and bowed 
the knee at other shrines. He was jealous for 
the place of his birth, for the school of his rehg- 
ious training, for the associations and memories 






MARK THE STEADIED 273 



of his youth; and he was unwilling to bear a 
part in the injuring of these. There was an ele- 
ment of true loyalty in the weakness of John 
Mark. 

By and by something happened at Jerusalem 
which modified Mark's view. A conciliatory 
council was held there to soften the differences 
between Jews and Gentiles. As the result of 
that council the Church at Jerusalem gave a 
patronising recognition to the Gentiles. Phleg- 
matic and unaccompanied with enthusiasm as 
the recognition was, it suggested to Mark the 
possibility of another rolling movement on his 
part. Was not Paul put in a new light by this 
act of the council! Had not the Mother 
Church taken him under her wing! Had not 
Jerusalem given him her blessing! Could not 
Mark now offer his services to Paul without 
being disloyal to Jerusalem! On the former 
occasion he had felt like a traitor to the past; 
but surely that reproach could not exist now! 
Might he not go back to Paul and say, ' My 
Church has publicly recognised the rights of 

the Gentiles; I may with a clear conscience 
18 



274 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

return to yoii^ ' ! And then, his uncle Barnabas 
was pleading with him to come back. He 
missed the nephew's company. His relations 
with Paul had become somewhat strained. He 
had begun to feel alone and unbefriended. He 
wanted a kinsman — some one to whom he 
could pour out his heart. When Mark consid- 
ered all these things he was disposed to return. 
He allowed Barnabas to make the proposal to 
Paul. But Paul refused to receive him — ^and 
from his point of view he may be excused in 
so doing. His strong and inflexible nature could 
not • respect rolling stones. He was unwilling 
to admit into his band of workers a weak and 
wavering soul. Mark had recently deserted 
his cause; why in so brief a space should he 
change his mind again ! Was such a rapid re- 
conversion any compliment to that cause, or 
did it give any security for permanent ad- 
herence! Would not the enrolling of such a 
man be only the introducing into the ranks of ■ 
an element of weakness and the sowing of un- 
promising seed in a healthy and fertile field! 
But if the modern spectator can excuse Paul, 



MARK THE STEADIED 275 

Barnabas could not; he threw up the cause 
and retired to Cyprus. He did not go alone 
He asked Mark to accompany him — which 
shows that his wish to bring him back had 
been rather personal than ecclesiastical. And 
here the unfortunate Mark again changes his 
front. He goes to Cyprus. He had been a 
Jew; he had been a Jewish Christian; he 
had been a Gentile Christian; he had been a 
Jewish Christian once more; he was well- 
nigh becoming a Gentile Christian once more. 
Thwarted in this last resolve, what does he be- 
come now.? What name should we give to him 
in Cyprus? I would call him the companion to 
a good inan. I think he went neither for Jew 
nor Gentile, but purely for the sake of Barnabas. 
I have heard men sneer at this mission to Cy- 
prus. I have seen Christian writers point with 
scorn to the narrow sphere he had chosen for 
his labours and the life of laziness he had 
purchased for his soul. It is an ungenerous 
sneer. The mission of Mark to Cyprus was not 
a religious mission. It was a mission of human 
sympathy — sympathy for a private friend. He 



276 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

went to comfort the grief and cheer the soHtude 
of one who had always loved and befriended 
him and whose very sorrow had been incurred 
in the effort to do him service. You may call 
his journey to Cyprus another movement of 
the stone; yet it was a movement not toward 
worldly pleasure but toward Christian sacrifice. 

How long Mark remained in Cyprus I do 
not know — it may have been for years. In 
any case, it must have been a time of much 
benefit, moral and intellectual. He met the 
Gentiles in a field where there was no conflict 
— the life of social intercourse. He was able 
to look at them as men and women bearing a 
common burden — to view them as fellow-citi- 
zens apart from creed, apart from sect, apart 
from church-membership, and to feel that the 
soul of man was larger than his systems. I 
doubt not that the days of Mark in Cyprus 
did him good. 

But there was coming to this man a greater 
good still — an event which was to be the turn- 
ing-point of his life. There came to him one 
day a call from across the sea; and the voice 



MARK THE STEADIED 277 

that uttered it was that of the man who had 
attracted his youthful years — Simon Peter. He 
called on Mark to help him — not as a mission- 
ary, but as a secretary. The former fisher- 
man of Galilee knew well the advantage he 
would reap from superior culture. He knew 
that Mark had received that culture — that he 
had possessed from youth all the opportunities 
which wealth can bring. There had been no 
hindrance to his education. He had enjoyed the 
influences of social refinement and the ameni- 
ties of a happy home. He had not been tossed 
upon the sea as he himself had been, but had 
been allowed to pitch his tent upon the hill. 
His superior leisure had given him superior 
learning. Peter wanted such a man — one who 
could clothe his thoughts and interpret them to 
the people. Mark heard his cry for help, and 
he said, * I will go. ' Barnabas himself must 
have urged him to go. All through his life 
no such suitable opening had appeared for 
John Mark. It was a place made for him, cut 
out for him, fitted to bring into bold relief all 
that was best and truest and noblest within him, 



278 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

and to waken that which had long been asleep 
in his heart — a definite purpose in living. 

Little did John Mark know where in this 
new occupation his opening was to lie. It was 
not in having a fixed profession. It was not 
in being thrown into direct contact with the 
apostles. It was not even in the companion- 
ship with so great a soul as Peter. It was in 
a greater companionship — that of Christ Him- 
self. Mark received from Peter the notes of 
a Gospel. When he put these together there 
emerged a portrait of the Master — the first 
portrait of the Master that was ever presented 
to the human eye. As Mark gazed upon the 
unexpected result of his own handiwork, his 
spirit was stirred within him. What did he 
see? The one thing he needed to see — an 
aim in life. Hitherto he had wavered between 
Jew and Gentile. As he looked into that face, 
Jew and Gentile alike vanished, and there shone 
out only one form — Man. Jerusalem faded ; 
Antioch faded ; and over the blank spaces there 
rose the republic of human souls. As he gazed 
upon that portrait there dawned on him a 



MARK THE STEADIED 279 

great thought — the idea that what gave men 
equal rights was neither Judaism nor Gentil- 
ism, but the common cross of humanity. What 
was that earliest portrait of the Master which 
we now call the Gospel of Mark? It was the 
picture which delineated a great physician — a 
healer of human woes. It was the portrait of 
a soul that had put deeds in the place of words 
— that felt life was too short for verbal contro- 
versy and must be approached by the work of 
the hand. It was the depicting of one who 
did not ask at the outset, 'Are you a Jew ? ' 

* Are you a Gentile ? ' ' Are you a worshipper 
of any kind ? ' but whose primary question was, 

* Have you anything requiring to be healed } ' 

And this portrait woke Mark's soul. There 
rose within him a great resolve — he would fol- 
low that picture of the Master. He would 
stand aside in the question between Gentile 
and Jew; he would devote himself to a larger 
problem. He would become a sick-nurse to 
humanity, a minister to human need. And by 
and by there occurred a chance for testing his 
resolve. His old antagonist Paul came to the 



28o THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

depths of sorrow. His splendid missionary 
career was at last interrupted; the bird was 
arrested in its flight, and caged. The apos- 
tle, trapped by his Jewish countrymen, lan- 
guished within a prison at Caesarea. A 
thought comes to Mark. Was not this the 
place in which the definite purpose of his life 
should begin! Could there be a better time 
for indecision to vanish and wavering to cease ! 
He had determined to follow the healing foot- 
steps of Jesus; were they not leading him first 
of all to Caesarea to help his opponent of for- 
mer days! Paul had doubted the genuineness 
of his Gentilism; would he doubt the genuine- 
ness of his humanity ! If he went to him in his 
poverty, in his loneliness, in his hour of enforced 
inaction — if he brought wealth to supply his 
needs, fellowship to meet his solitude, a min- 
istrant hand to assist his weariness — would not 
Paul at last believe in him 1 Mark resolves that 
he will yield to Paul's adversity the homage 
which he had refused to his prosperity, and 
that he will lend to his hours of weakness the 
service of a slave to his master. 



MARK THE STEADIED 281 

We know how gloriously his promise was 
fulfilled; there was no faltering, no paltering, 
no altering, any more. He came to the prison 
at Caesarea and supplicated permission to serve. 
I know not how Paul received him. Perhaps 
at first the gifts appeared anonymously — Paul 
may have been beguiled into love. But I know 
that ere long he was conscious of Mark's no- 
bleness — conscious that at last a steady race 
had begun. Almost the latest act of his life 
was to look back on these days at Caesarea, and 
record his sense of how profitable this man's 
ministration had been. He gives him his 
word of recommendation — he asks the Church 
to receive him. Nay, there is something more 
touching still. When the apostle's last day is 
drawing near, when death stares him in the face, 
when most of the companions of his former 
years have fled, who is it that he asks for, who 
is it that he longs to see.? It is Mark. I can 
imagine no greater compliment paid by man to 
man. I should think it worth while to be re- 
jected a hundred times if as a recompense I 
received such an approach at last. Did Mark 



282 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

go? I feel sure he did. I have no doubt that 
he went with Timothy to Rome to cheer Paul's 
latest hours; and I believe that he remained 
there to lead the ambulance corps of human- 
ity. There, not inappropriately, we shall leave 
him — in the city of the steadfast, in the place 
where of all others men had learned the wis- 
dom of inflexible tenacity. That city will con- 
firm him in his acquired robustness, and he 
will impart to her somewhat of his original soft- 
ness; and it may be that from this union there 
shall at length emerge a beautiful and harmoni- 
ous blend. 

LORD, I should like to join the ambulance 
corps of humanity. I would rather be 
a member of that band than either a Gentile 
or a Jew. Thou art leading our age where 
Mark was led — to the bearing of the cross. 
Never has Thy portrait been studied so deeply 
as now. In past days we studied other por- 
traits, and therefore we aspired to other things 
than the human. We gazed on Paul and cried, 
* Great is the mystery of Godhead ! ' We gazed 



MARK THE STEADIED 283 

on Peter and said, * Show us the things which 
the angels desire to look into!' We gazed on 
John and exclaimed, * Let us see the city of 
gold ! ' We gazed on Matthew and breathed 
the prayer, ' Unroll the book of prophecy ! ' 
These were aspirings after heaven. But it is 
only now that we have begun to aspire after 
earth, have desired to see its mysteries un- 
veiled. It is only in gazing into Thy face that 
we have seen the face of our brother-man. 
Thou hast kept the best wine till the last O 
Lord. I had been long seeking to pierce che 
clouds of nature, but I had never pierced the 
cloud in my brother's soul — never till I saw 
Thee. Now there has come to me a new evan- 
gel, nay, the old misread evangel. Thou hast 
said to my soul, * Why standest thou gazing up 
into heaven! the Son of Man is coming down 
from heaven to earth.' I asked Thee to open 
the sky ; Thou hast said, * Open the prison 
doors!' I asked Thee for a tabernacle on the 
mount ; Thou hast said, * Heal the demoniac 
on the plain ! ' I asked Thee for a sign of Thy 
coming; Thou hast said., * It will be man's 



284 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

humanity to man.* I asked Thee how I 
should learn Thy doctrine; Thou hast said, 
' Feed my sheep ! ' I asked for a gate into the 
temple; Thou hast pointed to a door in the 
hospital. I asked for Thy robing-room; Thou 
hast shown me an orphanage home. I asked 
to drink of Thy cup; Thou hast sent me to 
scenes of misery. I asked to share Thy glory; 
Thou hast called me to restore one fallen 
soul. The service to my Father has become 
the service to my brother; give me a place, O 
Lord, in earth's ambulance corps! 



CHAPTER XIV 

CORNELIUS THE TRANSPLANTED 

It may seem strange that I should place the 
name of Cornelius after those of Barnabas and 
Mark. Cornelius only figures at the dawn of 
the apostolic age, Barnabas and Mark survive 
into its midday; why fall back from a later to 
an earlier life? It is because in these pages I 
have followed a definite principle of chronol- 
ogy. I have placed first in order of time those 
figures of the Gallery which came into clear 
and undoubted contact with the earthly life of 
the Master — Peter, John, Thomas, and the like. 
Next in order of time I have placed the two 
men whose contact with the earthly Christ is 
doubtful — Barnabas and Mark. The former 
is said to have been one of the seventy to 
whom Christ personally intrusted a mission; 

the latter, as I have already stated, has been 
285 



286 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

traditionally identified with the young man who 
followed Jesus from the Garden. These, how- 
ever, are matters of conjecture, and so I have 
given to the subjects of them a later place. 
After these I have put those who neither in 
history nor in tradition have been enrolled amid 
the band which in His human form beheld 
the Lord. Foremost among these in point of 
time is the man Cornelius. He is not a Jew- 
ish figure; he is not even an Eastern figure. 
He is a man of the West, a European, a 
Roman. He is not only separated from out- 
ward contact with Jesus ; he is separated from 
outward contact with the environment of Je- 
sus. His life has been spent in war — in the 
service of an empire whose aims were not 
Messianic. He had breathed the atmosphere 
of the camp rather than the air of Calvary, 
had heard, not sermons on the mount, but 
ribald jests on the highway. Cornelius was the 
child of an empire which had passed its merid- 
ian glory — the empire of Tiberius, the empire 
of Caligula, the empire which had lost the form 
of sound words and the semblance of good deeds. 



CORNELIUS THE TRANSPLANTED 287 

He had not been born within the compass of 
church bells. 

By and by this man, as the captain of a regi- 
ment, was ordered to Caesarea. He was sent 
there to represent the fact of Roman conquest, 
to exercise a military surveillance over the dis- 
trict. But, all the time that he was keeping 
military watch over Judea, Judea kept moral 
watch over him. He came to represent Rome's 
conquest of Israel; he ended by representing 
Israel's conquest of Rome. He was converted 
by his own dependents — converted to the faith 
of Judaism. His nature became transformed. 
The dissolute man grew devout. The proud 
man became prayerful. The grasping man be- 
gan to lavish gratuities. The undomesticated 
man took up the duties of a household, and spe- 
cially the care of its religious life. Cornelius 
was conquered by the moral power of Judaism. 
There are souls that in their ascent to Chris- 
tianity pass first through the faith of their 
ancestors. Cornelius was one of these. He be- 
gan as a Pagan, the worshipper of many gods. 
Then he rose to be a Jew, the worshipper of 



288 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

one God of righteousness. Another step re- 
mained to make him perfect ; he had to become 
a Christian, the worshipper of a God of grace. 
We are disposed, indeed, to wonder what 
was lacking to Comehus. His Jewish faith is 
described in such glowing colours that we are 
tempted to ask what more could be desired. 
A man of devoutness, a man of prayer, a man 
of domestic virtue, a man of public charity — 
has he not already done everything which a 
Christian can do! Perhaps. A boy who has 
been through the school methods of arithmetic 
can do everything in matters- of calculation that 
an office-clerk can do. But he will not do it 
in the same manner, nor with the same quick- 
ness, and therefore he could not be an office- 
clerk. Before he can become that, he must 
get rid of his school method, and learn a short 
road to the goal. The most perfect penmanship 
will not fit a man to be a reporter. In process 
of time he could by ordinary penmanship do all 
that the reporter does; but the process of time 
is just what is denied to him; there is required 
a shorthand process. That is what Cornelius 



CORNELIUS THE TRANSPLANTED 289 

needed. He could calculate splendidly, he 
could write beautifully; but he could do both 
only by school methods. He wanted a means 
of coming to the goal with more ease and with 
more rapidity — of reaching the summit of the 
hill, not by an act of laborious chmbing, but 
by the movement of an eagle's wing. This 
was the new stage that was coming to Cornelius. 
The strange thing is that in teaching Corne- 
lius His own new evangel, God is represented 
in this picture as following the old - school 
method. The man is to be taught a quick way 
of reaching heaven; but he is taught it in a 
most cumbrous, lengthy, and laborious manner. 
Have you ever considered the singular charac- 
ter of that picture in the tenth chapter of 
Acts. The man Cornelius is about to receive 
the Holy Spirit — the most unfettered gift which 
the Divine can bestow upon the human. Why 
does it not come unfettered to Cornelius.^ We 
should expect that it would have rushed into 
his soul like a flash of sunshine, like a breath of 
morning. Does it.? Listen to the lengthened 

process! There comes to him a shining angel 
19 



290 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

and tells him that he is under the favour of 
heaven. He bids Cornelius send men to Joppa 
to summon Simon Peter, and gives directions 
for finding his lodging. Three men are sent 
on a day's journey to invite the apostle to Joppa 
— two domestics of Cornelius and a soldier who 
waited on him. One would think the Divine 
would have quicker modes of telegraphy! In 
the meantime, Peter also is prepared by a vis- 
ion for the receiving of a Gentile convert, is 
told to count nothing common or unclean. One 
asks, What need of this preparation — ought he 
not to have known that in the seed of Abraham 
all nations were to be blessed ! Then Peter is 
wakened from his dream by a knocking at the 
door, and the three messengers of Cornelius en- 
ter. They tell their story, and abide the whole 
day. Next morning they set out for Caesarea, 
accompanied by Peter and a retinue of his 
fellow-Christians; and it is the following day 
before they arrive. Cornelius, too, has gath- 
ered to meet Peter a company of his kinsmen. 
He falls down before the apostle in an attitude 
of worship — showing that the Paganism was not 



CORNELIUS THE TRANSPLANTED 291 

quite dead in his nature. Peter raises him up 
and bids him transfer his homage to Jesus. 
Then follows a sermon on the life and work of 
Jesus; and, as the words strike the ear, the 
gift of God at last descends, and Cornelius and 
his whole company are filled with the Holy 
Ghost. 

Now, to what purpose is this waste! Why 
extend over three days an act that might have 
been momentary ! Why use so much machinery 
for a deed that might have been spontaneous! 
The Divine Spirit required no human message 
to Joppa — much less three messengers. Simon 
Peter could not bring Cornelius one step near- 
er to God Almighty ; he was already as near as 
he could be without touching Him. Why re- 
vert to the stage-coach when we have the rail- 
way-train! The Spirit's province is to blow 
where it listeth — ^as the lightning cometh out 
of the east and shineth even unto the west. 
There must be some cause for this choice of a 
long way. If an object is within reach of your 
hand and you ring a bell to call from the other 
end of the house some one who will give it to 



292 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

you, it is clear you must have a motive beyond 
the acquiring of the object. Can we discover 
any motive for the use of so many hands in the 
conversion of one man? 

I think we can. Remember who this one 
man is. He is a soldier. The design of this 
picture is to delineate the transplanting of a 
soldier. I say, * the transplanting.' Cornelius 
is not to be annihilated and created a new man. 
His soldierly qualities are to be transferred to 
a Christian soil. But if you want to do that, 
you must approach Cornelius as a soldier. 
You must allow Christianity to come to him in 
a military form. If you look at the narrative 
in this light you will see how singularly appro- 
priate the experience was to the man. Consider 
for one thing that the entire constitution of an 
army rests on mutual dependence. No one 
can be a successful soldier as an individual; 
he requires the co-operation of his fellows. 
Imagine that what Cornelius wanted had been, 
not the spirit of Christ, but the spirit of Mars, 
the god of war. On what condition could Mars 
have promised his spirit to Cornelius.? Only 



CORNELIUS THE TRANSPLANTED 293 

on the condition that the same spirit should be 
shared by many others, and that the common 
inspiration should make itself felt in the ranks. 
One soldier can no more make a victory than 
one swallow can make a summer. If there is a 
divided interest, there is a divided allegiance. 
If one part of the ranks has the notion that 
another part is animated by a different spirit, 
the former will not only distrust the latter — 
they will distrust their own strength, will be 
paralysed in their own energy. If the god of 
war had appeared to Cornelius he must have 
told him that the state of things in Caesarea 
would be affected by the state of things at 
Joppa. 

Now, to this phase of the soldier-life Chris- 
tianity made appeal when it spoke to Cornelius. 
He had asked the spirit of Jesus in room of the 
spirit of Mars ; yet the new spirit addressed him 
in the garb of the old. God revealed Himself as 
the leader of an army, and Cornelius was made 
to feel that he was being treated as a soldier. 
The voice said to him : * Get as many as you 
can to take an interest in the cause in which you 



294 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

are interested. Enlist your two ser\'ants and 
the soldier who waits upon you. Enlist your 
kinsmen and friends. Enlist the sympathies of 
Simon Peter and those who are in his train. 
Let the representatives of all classes give a sub- 
scription to your cause — the domestic, the sol- 
dier, the church-dignitary, the church -worker, 
the companions of the social hour. Let them 
each have a stone in the temple, a window in 
the building. Bring me not your own heart 
alone, but the sense that other hearts are in 
union with yours.' 

This, then, I take to be the first reason for 
the protracted process in the conversion of 
Cornelius. The design is to transplant a sol- 
dier, and therefore he is approached as a military 
man — ^as one who has always associated victor)' 
with the co-operation of the many. But I come 
to a second reason for the protraction of the 
process, and one which also lies in the appeal 
to a soldier. For, an army is characterised, not 
only by the mutual dependence of its members, 
but by their common life of sacrifice. In time 
of war the essence of military life is its sacri- 



CORNELIUS THE TRANSPLANTED 295 

ficial character. I say, in time of war. There 
may be license in time of peace — the Roman 
soldier was then no paragon. But in war there 
is no life so full of sacrifice. Nor do I think 
that the main stress of military sacrifice lies in 
the hour of battle. There have been men in 
the heat of battle who have for a time been 
unconscious of their wounds. It seems to me 
that the sorest part of a soldier's military life 
is in the things which defer the battle, in the 
objects which impose delay. It is in the long 
and weary marches, in the treading of arduous 
ground, in the exposure to thirst and hunger, 
in the fatigue and lassitude which accompany a 
burning sun, in the demand to keep up the 
spirit when there is no excitement, no call to 
action, no enemy in view — it is there that the 
sacrifice of the soldier appears. I believe that 
the deepest sacrifices in the soul of man are not 
in life's actual battlefield, but in its moments 
of silent endurance. Many a man can resist the 
winecup in company who cannot resist it in soli- 
tude ; for the idea of a thing is ever more power- 
ful than itself, and its image in the heart out- 



296 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

weighs its image in the hand. The life of the 
soldier has embodied a truth of humanity. 

Now, it is to this life of the soldier that in the 
case of Cornelius Christianity appeals. Cor- 
nelius is in hot haste to reach his goal — the 
Advent of the Divine Spirit. That will be to 
him the beginning of the real battle with sin; 
the day of the Spirit's coming will be to Cor- 
nelius the day of conquest — and with all his 
might he longs for it. But he must be treated 
as a soldier; he must be made to pass through a 
soldier's sacrifice. The conquest might come 
at once; but that would not be the revelation 
to a soldier. God must speak to Cornelius in 
his own language — and that language is mili- 
tary sacrifice. Instead of reaching his goal in 
a moment, let him wait for it anxious days, 
march for it long miles, weave for it arduous 
plans. Let him for the sake of it submit to the 
temporary loss of two of his servants. Let him 
for a time dispense with the services of his 
favourite attendant — a soldier who knows his 
special wants and when to meet them. Let 
him, above all, sink his pride. Proud Roman 



CORNELIUS THE TRANSPLANTED 297 

as he was, representative of Roman conquest 
as he was, let him bow the knee to one who had 
been a fisherman of Galilee and acknowledge 
that in matters spiritual the peasant was his liege 
lord. I think there is something grandly appro- 
priate in the delay imposed on the soldier Cor- 
nelius. 

But there is, I think, a third element in mili- 
tary life which constitutes a ground for the 
appropriateness of the delay. The life of the 
soldier, whether he means it or not, is a vicari- 
ous one; it is lived for the sake of others, A 
man may live sacrificially and yet may live pure- 
ly for himself. The artist may scorn delights 
and spend laborious days, yet he may be animat- 
ed by a motive essentially selfish — the achieving 
of some work that will perfect his fame. But 
the average soldier can have no such motive. 
To a man of the ranks, even to a man, like 
Cornelius, a little above the ranks, the chance 
of winning distinction is infinitesimally small; 
and the pay is not worth striving for. There 
is an elimination of all personal feeling — even 
the feeling of enmity. The man is at war with 



298 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

something he does not hate. He is fighting 
the battle of another — ^his country. Voluntarily 
or involuntarily, it is for her he makes long 
marches, it is for her he bears the drought and 
the famine, it is for her he endures privation 
and weariness, it is for her he dares the path 
of death and braves the mutilation of life and 
limb. The soldier, whether he knows it or not, 
whether he accedes to it or not, is working 
for another's joy. 

So, when Christianity comes to Cornelius it 
appeals to this fact of the military experience. 
It bids him connect his conversion, not with his 
own glory, but with the glory of others. It tells 
him to calculate, not how happy he will be, but 
how many people he will make happy. And 
think for a moment how beautifully this purpose 
is achieved. Cornelius submitted to a proc- 
ess which robbed him of all glory. He took a 
back seat. He subsided into the place of a 
passive recipient. He gave the post of action 
to his servants, to his private attendant, to the 
Christians at Joppa, above all to Simon Peter. 
It was to enlarge Peter y not to enlarge him- 



I 



CORNELIUS THE TRANSPLANTED 299 

self, that Cornelius was directed to the Chris- 
tian apostle. Cornelius might have reached the 
kingdom at a bound; but Peter would have 
felt sore that a man should mount to heaven 
without circumcision. The Divine Voice said: 
'There must be no soreness on this birthday. 
I must first liberalise Peter — must stoop to win 
his approval. I must send him up to the roof of 
the tanner's house at Joppa. I must tell him 
to look forth upon the sea — that sea on which 
rested the eyes of my prophet Jonah. And 
when he remembers Jonah he will remember 
Nineveh. He will remember how even on the 
heathen city my compassion failed not to fall — 
though circumcision was not there, though tem- 
ple was not there, though rite of Jewish worship 
was not there. He will remember and he will 
say, "What God has cleansed let me not call 
unclean!" And then I shall cry to Peter, 
"Come thyself, and cure Cornelius!" Cor- 
nelius needs him not; but he sadly needs Cor- 
nelius. He wants to be broadened, deepened, 
heightened ; I shall make him put his hand upon 
the Gentile and speak peace. For the sake 



300 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

of another's joy Cornelius may wdl consent to 
take a lower room. ' 

Let me now revert to the statement that the 
design of this picture is to exhibit the trans- 
planting of a soldier — in other words, that it is 
intended to represent the grafting of military 
quahties into the Church of Christ. At first 
sight this is the last kind of transference which 
could have been thought an object of desire. 
We can understand very well how the qualities 
of the domestic ser\'ant should be carried over 
into the many mansions of the Father's house, 
for the qualities of the domestic servant are, 
even in the houses of men, Divine virtues — gifts 
of the grace of God. Obedience to duty, fidel- 
ity, honesty, integrity, truthfulness, justice, 
the absence of self-interest and of eye-ser\dce 
— these are the qualities which mark the good 
servant in the secular home, and these are the 
qualities which stamp the good servant in the 
household of faith. Christianity, as much as 
life, is a state of dependence ; and the form of a 
ser\'ant is required for both. But war — where 
does that find place in the precepts of Christ ! Is 



CORNELIUS THE TRANSPLANTED 301 

He not the Prince of Peace ! Was not ' Peace * 
the song over His cradle and the sigh of His 
last farewell! Were not the makers of peace 
to be called in a special sense the children of His 
Father! Where is there room for Cornelius 
here — for the soldier Cornelius \ There is 
room for the man; but must he not lay aside 
his sword and his helmet when he enters the 
kingdom of Christ! Surely the red flowers of 
man's garden will not be transplanted into the 
Garden of the Lord I 

Yes, they must and they shall. The demand 
for such transplanting has been loud through 
all the Christian ages. Why did the Medieval 
Church initiate orders of sacred knighthood — 
knights of the temple, knights of St. Mary, 
knights of St. John.? It was because the Medi- 
eval Church wanted a section of her sons to be 
soldiers in spirit and to transfer the qualities of 
war into the paths of peace. Why has our mod- 
ern Christianity instituted a Salvation Army.? 
It is because Cornelius is still needed among the 
Christians — ^because in peace as well as in war 
there are wrongs that await redressing. Why 



302 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

does our twentieth century inaugurate in every 
town a Boys' Brigade? It is because we want 
Cornelius in the midst of us. It is because we 
desire that from an early age our youthful gen- 
eration should learn to associate religion with 
manliness, to connect the cross of Christ with 
all that is brave and heroic and noble, and to 
plant in civil life those very seeds which in the 
sphere of the warrior made for military glory. 

The truth is, what Christian civilisation needs 
in a time of peace is pre-eminently the presence 
of Cornelius — the infusion of a military element. 
We are apt to be ashamed in peace of that 
which we laud in war. In men on the road to 
battle we admire abstinence, temperance, cau- 
tion, care of bodily health, the avoidance of any 
temptation to any form of physical excess. We 
count this manly; and why.^ Because the men 
are under military orders. But when we see 
these qualities in time of peace we are apt 
to call them womanish; and why.? Because 
then the men are not supposed to be under 
military orders, but to be simply timorous, 
nervous, frightened. Yet, from the Christian 



CORNELIUS THE TRANSPLANTED 303 

point of view, this is a mistake. The man is 
as truly on the march in peace as in war, and 
as truly under orders. We want him to feel 
that. We want him to realise that in the com- 
mon things of life he is on soldier's duty — ^bound 
by a tie of honour, pledged by an oath of fealty, 
dedicated to the service of a government whose 
rule is over all nations. * They shall beat their 
swords into ploughshares and their spears into 
pruning-hooksj' are the words in which is pro- 
claimed the advent of the Prince of Peace. But 
even in that proclamation there is a tribute paid 
to the soldier. The old warlike material is not 
to be thrown away; it is the sword that is to 
become the ploughshare, it is the spear that is to 
be made the pruning-hook. Cornelius the sol- 
dier is not to be annihilated in the resurrection 
of Cornelius the man. As he ascends in his 
fiery chariot the military mantle is not to drop 
from him. It is to be carried into the new 
kingdom, to be worn in the new world, to be 
illustrated in the new life. The sacrificial spirit 
which animates the deeds of war is to be dis- 
played again in the fields of peace. 



304 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

As he enters the portals of the Christian life 
Cornelius fades from our view; his form is lost 
in the crowd, and we see him no more. But 
though in visible presence he appears not, he 
reappears in metaphor. Cornelius represents 
and foreshadows the conquest of Rome by 
Christ. Viewed in this typical aspect, we do 
meet him again. Nearly three centuries after, 
we see his conversion repeated in the conver- 
sion by Christianity of the empire itself. There 
stands Cornelius once more — calling on Peter 
to help him ! There he stands — wielding the 
military sceptre, but surrendering the sceptre 
of the heart! There he stands — embodying in 
converted Rome a union of his own three ex- 
periences! His original Paganism is there — 
heathen rites are baptised into Christian wor- 
ship. His subsequent Judaism is there — a. God 
is recognised who is holy but hard to be en- 
treated, flawless but far away. His final Chris- 
tianity is there — the cross has become the 
watchword of all life and the symbol of all 
power. And the retention of his soldier-heart 
is there — with the garment of Christ Rome has 



I 



CORNELIUS THE TRANSPLANTED 305 



put on a fresh military robe. She has increased 
her fearlessness; she has augmented her forti- 
tude; she has strengthened her power of en- 
durance; she has deepened her determination; 
she has quickened her loyalty; she has fanned 
her enthusiasm ; she has sharpened her sense of 
duty ; she has almost created her spirit of chiv- 
alry. The sword has survived in the plough- 
share, the spear in the pruning-hook. 

LORD, fit me for the ranks of Thine army! 
Put Thy best robe upon me — the soldier's 
robe! Give me Thy truly military spirit — the 
spirit that casteth out fear — ^love! Fit me for 
the times of waiting! I am more afraid of the 
silence than the conflict. Often have I said in 
the old time, ' If I could get away from the 
world, I could put off my armour. ' Often have 
I thought, * If I could leave the scenes of tempta- 
tion and could rest in some quiet, secluded spot, 
I might lay aside the soldier's garb.' And lo! 
when I tried it, I found that I must add to my 
armour. I found that the scene of temptation 

is not outside of me but within me, that the bat- 
10 



3o6 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

tlefield is the silent field. I need Thee most, 
my Father, when I am meeting with myself. I 
could perform a sacrifice amid the crowd because 
I feel that the crowd would applaud me for it. 
But when Thou hast sent the multitude away, 
when there are no spectators of my struggle, 
when the flags wave not, the banners stream not, 
the trumpets blow not, when I am alone in the 
field with my own will, it is then I need Thine 
armour, O my God. It is comparatively easy 
to wrestle after daybreak, for the daybreak dis- 
tracts me from myself. But before the day 
breaks, I am alone — alone with myself, alone 
with my erring soul. Arm me, O Lord, arm me 
for the great battle where there fights but one ! 
Give me a sword for the solitude, a spear for 
the silence, a helmet for the hermitage, a 
breastplate for the breathless air! Quicken me 
for the quiet, fortify me for the fireside, nerve 
me for the night, strengthen me for the study, 
warm me for the woodland ramble, inspire me 
for the inland calm ! Let me wear my armour \i\ 
life's placid hour! 



CHAPTER XV 

TIMOTHY THE DISCIPLINED 

There are some who have professed to read 
the character by the handwriting. In the case 
of Timothy we have a task more difficult still; 
it is to read the character of one man by the 
handwriting of another. Nearly all we can 
gather of the inner life of Timothy is wrapped 
up within two brief letters addressed to him 
by Paul. They are really a ministerial charge 
containing practical advices and cautions to Tim- 
othy on his appointment to the pastorate of the 
Church at Ephesus. Are we entitled to take 
these advices and cautions as indicating Paul's 
sense of Timothy's weak points? I think we 
are. When Paul writes a letter it is always a 
characteristic letter — characteristic, I mean, of 
the person or persons written to. When he 

writes to the residents in Rome, he exhibits 
307 



3o8 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

Christ as * the power unto salvation ' — ^and why ? 
Because the dweller in that military city was 
apt to think Christianity a form of weakness. 
When he writes to the Corinthians, he exhib- 
its Christ as wisdom — and why? Because to 
the Greek Christianity appeared foolishness. 
When he writes to the Galatians, he tells them 
to be not weary in well-doing — and why.^ 
Because they had revealed themselves as fickle. 
When he writes to Philemon, it is to guide him 
in a personal affair — an affair in which he had 
temptation to show harshness. Nay, when he 
writes to Timothy himself on a physical matter, 
his advice is professedly dictated by a sense of 
Timothy's infirmity — *Take a little wine for 
your stomach's sake.' I conclude therefore 
that, as the physical advice was prompted by 
Paul's knowledge of a physical weakness, the 
mental advice was prompted by his knowledge 
of a mental weakness ; and I feel authorised to 
use these letters as a biographical mirror in 
which the secrets of the life are revealed and 
the heart of the man is spread out before us. 
Timothy could have started life with the 



TIMOTHY THE DISCIPLINED 309 

motto, *Two worlds are mine.' He was born 
probably at Lystra — a city of Lycaonia. With- 
in him was the blood of two opposite heredities. 
His mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois 
were Jewish Christians of the most pious and 
devoted type. That stream of heredity from 
the blood of Israel was, however, counteracted 
by another stream. If his mother was a Jew, 
his father was a Greek — of what religious per- 
suasion we know not. Timothy was therefore 
the child of opposite worlds, and it was inevit- 
able that they should strive within him. Israel 
and Greece were essentially opposed currents. 
Their difference la}'- deeper than any religious 
doctrine; it was constituted by their view of 
life. The Jew aimed at the repression of na- 
ture; the object of the Greek was to give nature 
full play. The Jew encouraged the sense of 
obligation; the Greek fostered the thought of 
spontaneity. The Jew looked upon the uni- 
verse with awe ; the Greek viewed it as a pleas- 
ure-ground. The Jew uncovered his head in 
the presence of Divine mysteries; the Greek 
made them subjects of daring speculation. It 



3IO THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

was evident that the main danger to Timothy lay 
on the Greek side. Where Judaism embraced 
Christianity it was sternly Christian; where 
Greece favoured Christianity its affection was 
apt to be divided. Probably in the mind of 
the father Christianity had not passed the stage 
of a mere favourable recognition. The age of 
'many gods' was past; but the age of *many 
systems' had taken its place, and the father of 
Timothy in all likelihood leant towards each in 
turn. It was not altogether a propitious nest 
for the maturing of a steady wing. 

In the home, however, the mother seems to 
have had her own way. She brought up the 
child in the faith of Christ and under the in- 
fluence of her pious example. He seems to 
have been early put to active service in the 
cause of Christianity. When Paul on his mis- 
sionary journey came to Lystra and first saw 
him, he was exceedingly young; yet he was al- 
ready talked of as a helper in the work. Paul 
was greatly struck wth him. He discerned the 
promise and the potency of a high and useful life 
which was worth fostering into bloom. He re- 



TIMOTHY THE DISCIPLINED 311 

solved to train him under his own eye. Doubt- 
less he recognised the danger of the counter- 
acting Greek current in his blood and in his 
home, and thought the removal from his home 
might modify the action of his blood. Accord- 
ingly, he took Timothy with him. He took 
him as a pupil — one to be trained for higher 
service. But when next we meet him he is no 
longer Paul's pupil; he is his companion. He 
has not indeed entered into the place of part- 
nership vacated by Barnabas. It was rather an 
association of love than of business, and that 
kind of love which bridges the separation of 
those divided by a gulf of years. The older 
man felt himself a protector; the younger 
clung to his support. Paul realised that he had 
adopted this youth, become sponsor for him in 
the eye of heaven. He felt that he was respon- 
sible for his eternal welfare — that he had to sup- 
ply the place which the good mother had filled 
and which the indifferent father ought to have 
filled. A flower had been committed to him in 
the Garden of the Lord; that flower he had 
to water every morning and nurture every day. 



312 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

Was there a possibility that the relation of 
Paul and Timothy might ever be reversed — 
that Timothy might become the protector and 
Paul the recipient? There would have been, 
but for one circumstance. It was this — Paul 
was never able to realise that Timothy was 
growing older. He insisted on always viewing 
him as the lad he met in Lystra. On that 
occasion Timothy was probably about twenty 
years of age. That was an exceedingly young 
man to have gained a local reputation among 
the Christians; and we could have understood 
Paul saying at that time, ' Let no man despise 
thy youth.' But he says it some fifteen years 
afterwards — when Timothy must have passed 
youth's despicable stage. The words were 
spoken near the end of Paul's life. He had 
gone through most of his crisis-moments. He 
had been imprisoned in Caesarea. He had made 
his appeal to Caesar. He had been shipwrecked 
on his voyage to Rome. He had been acquitted 
by a Roman tribunal. He had resumed his 
missionary labours, and, as a final act in them, 
he had ordained Timothy to the Church of 



TIMOTHY THE DISCIPLINED 313 

Ephesus. He had returned to Rome. He 
had been imprisoned once more — in that dun- 
geon from which he was only to issue through 
the gate of death. It was from that final cap- 
tivity that he wrote his pastoral counsels to his 
friend of long years. And it is then most of 
all that he seems to forget the years. He sees 
Timothy, not as he is, but as he was. He ig- 
nores the fifteen winters whose storms have 
swept across his brow and whose chills have 
furrowed his cheek. He sees him in his home 
at Lystra in all the freshness of life's morning. 
He sees him between two fires — the fire of de- 
votion to his mother and the fire of admiration 
for his father. He sees the struggle of his 
young heart between the Jew and the Greek — 
between the surrender of will and the specula- 
tion of intellect. He feels that the same con- 
flict is raging in the world still — nowhere more 
than at Ephesus, and that the whole current 
must be breasted by an inexperienced boy. In 
words which are pathetic in their loss of the 
sense of time he cries, * Let no man despise thy 
youth. * 



314 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

But have we never seen anything like this out- 
side of the New Testament ! Is it not a matter 
of daily observation! Do we not know that 
those who have been the guardians of the young 
find it very hard to realise their adolescence! 
I knew an elderly woman who always spoke of 
her brothers as * these boys. ' There was not 
one of them under fifty years of age; but she 
had been as a mother to them in youth and 
she realised not that their youth was gone. It 
is always the tendency of love to clothe its 
object with permanence. It is told of St. John 
that, when an old man, he stood in the streets 
of Ephesus and cried, * Little children, love one 
another!' Probably the 'little children' were 
nearly as old as himself; but they had been 
brought up as pupils in his Bible-class and he 
felt to them as a father. His love was too strong 
to observe the growing shadow on the dial; 
it saw the objects of its morning in the same 
perpetual youth as that in which the Christian 
saw his Christ — unchanged yesterday and to- 
day and for ever. Paul, too, had an illusion in the 
streets of Ephesus ; he took a man to be a boy. 



I 



TIMOTHY THE DISCIPLINED 315 

It was love's cry for permanence. It was the 
protest of the heart for the continuance of the 
morning. It was the desire of the spirit that time 
should write no wrinkle on the azure brow of that 
sea of life on which he had sailed long years ago. 
Timothy, then, stood before the eye of Paul 
in the garb of a young man. Paul felt that he 
wanted discipline — that the flower within him 
must be cultivated. It was not learning he 
needed ; it was pruning. There are men whose 
temptation comes from their ignorance; the 
dangers of Timothy came from his knowledge, 
his culture, his intellectual development. The 
spirit of Greece was in him, and the spirit of 
Greece was the spirit of independent thought. 
Paul dearly loved to think of him as still young ; 
but he felt that his Greek blood made youth a 
special danger. It was to youth that the seduc- 
tions of Greece peculiarly appealed. Rome's 
muscular vigour spoke to manhood; Judea's 
restraining influence spoke to middle age; but 
Greece with her morning radiance addressed 
the spirit of youth and found her most power- 
ful votaries in the children of the spring. 



3i6 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

Let me now proceed to indicate some of 
those weak points of Timothy's youth which 
Paul by an act of imagination transferred to 
his riper age. You will find that they will open 
up to every man a chapter of autobiography 
and that the weak points of young Timothy are 
the weak points which are apt to beset the youth 
of all men. Now, Paul is very emphatic as 
to the charge which in importance he would 
place first. It is not the charge which we 
should expect him to place first. If we were ad- 
dressing one whom we thought of as a young 
man and whom we believed to be under special 
temptation, we should begin by warning him 
against flagrant sins — against the excesses of 
the wine-cup, the excesses of the gaming-table, 
the excesses of human passion. Paul does not 
start with any of these; he tells Timothy first 
and foremost to cherish a reverent spirit towards 
those in authority! Is not this a strange ad- 
vice to put in the front ground of a young man's 
discipline. I do not think so. I think it would 
be the advice which in actual youth Timothy 
first needed. What is the root of youth's dan- 



TIMOTHY THE DISCIPLINED 317 

gers? It is the resistance to authority. I do 
not mean the resistance to any particular au- 
thority, but to the principle of authority itself. 
A young man tends to love the fruit because it 
is forbidden. The fruit in itself is often dis- 
tasteful to him. Command young Adam to 
climb the tree of knowledge, and he will prob- 
ably refuse ; forbid him, and that tree will become 
an object of desire. Youth oftener goes wrong 
from a false ideal of manliness than from any 
love of vice. To be free, to be independent, 
to do what one likes, to reveal the magnificent 
example of *I don't care,' to be pointed out as 
a bold, reckless spirit that fears not the face 
of man — that is the ideal which swims before 
the eye of youth and draws it into all perils. 

When Paul first met Timothy everything in 
the young man's blood tempted to the resist- 
ance of authority. His youth tempted him, for 
youth loves to feel itself free. His Greek de- 
scent tempted him, for Greece had ever as- 
pired to be free. And, strange to say, it must 
be added that his Christianity itself tempted him. 
It sounds curious to hear Paul exhort Timothy 



3i8 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

to pray for kings. We should have thought the 
charge would be, ' Pray for the poor and desti- 
tute. ' But we forget that by the early Christian 
it was the kings, and not the destitute, who 
were apt to be neglected. The typical primitive 
Christian looked down upon his temporal rulers. 
He held that the humble classes were the privi- 
leged classes. What he extended to the rich 
was at most only a patronage. It was not nat- 
ural that he should pray first for kings. He 
was a subject of no king but one — the Lord 
Jesus. The rulers of the world were in posses- 
sion of a mock dignity — a dignity which be- 
longed, not to them, but to Him. Why should 
he pray for their wise governing! Was not 
their government, whether wise or unwise, an 
obstacle in the march of the King of kings! 
Had not he a higher allegiance — the allegiance 
to another world, to a coming world, to a world 
before whose blaze of glory all the thrones and 
principalities and powers of earth must wither 
away! The kings of the nations might take 
tribute from his hand; they could get no trib- 
ute from his soul. 



TIMOTHY THE DISCIPLINED 319 

So in all likelihood thought young Timothy 
in the days when Paul first met him; and Paul 
transfers his youth to his riper years. He 
warns him that he is on a quicksand. He tells 
him to dismiss his contempt for the higher seats 
of this world. He tells him that, whether they 
know it or not, the rulers of earth are God's 
ministers. He tells him that, whether they 
know it or not, they are responsible for the bear- 
ing of a great burden. He tells him that, by 
reason of this burden, they are objects not for 
anger but for reverent commiseration — that 
they have more need to be prayed for than 
the poor and destitute. He bids him pray for 
them first of all; he bids him teach his peo- 
ple to pray for them. It was a new call to sym- 
pathy. Hitherto sympathy has been asked to 
descend the ladder; it is now asked to go up — 
to extend its charity to the high places of the 
earth, to enter into the troubles of those who 
sit in the upper room. 

Let me pass now to a second advice given 
by Paul to Timothy, or rather to a combination 
of two advices often supposed to be contradic- 



320 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

tory. He virtually tells him to avoid two kinds 
of fast living — the fastness of brain and the fast- 
ness of brainlessness. On the one hand he is 
very anxious that as a pastor he should avoid 
matters of intellectual speculation. On the 
other he is equally solicitous that he should not 
fritter away intellect altogether by living for triv- 
ialities and frivolities — * Flee youthful desires ! ' 
he says. I have said that these two dangers 
seem opposite — the one is over-thought, the 
other is thoughtlessness. We think of the 
former as a slow and quiet life, of the latter as 
a life of fastness. The truth is, they are both 
fast, and may be both equally fast. What do 
we mean by fastness.? Simply that too many 
sensations are being crowded together in a small 
space and in a short time. Physically speaking, 
it matters not what the sensation be. You may 
be a student living far from the works and ways 
of men, dwelling in seclusion and solitude, ab- 
staining from the whole round of worldly pleas- 
ure, never seen at fancy fete or fashionable ball, 
and yet you may be living as fast a life as if you 
were spending your days in a whirl of gaiety. 



TIMOTHY THE DISCIPLINED 321 

It is the number and the rapidity of your sensa- 
tions, and not their moral character, that deter- 
mine the rate at which you are traveUing. 

Now, it is more than likely that Timothy in 
his young days was under both of these tempta- 
tions. Does it seem to us that both could not 
exist in the same mind — that the one would serve 
as a counteraction to the other. We forget that 
this is the very thing which makes their exist- 
ence in one mind possible. Who, according to 
the Jewish Scriptures, is the man most taken up 
with the frivolities of life .? Of all people, it 
is Solomon — the profound student, the deep 
scholar, the speculative thinker, the man who 
filled the world with the fame of his wisdom ! I 
used to wonder at the incongruous combination. 
I see now that it is true to human nature. The 
typical Solomon is ever the most in danger of 
becoming frivolous. He needs a reaction. His 
mind has been on the wing round the stars; it 
will by and by be on the wing round the candle. 
He has been revolving the problems of eternity ; 
he will before long revolve in the dance of the 
hour. It is the very cry for a counteracting in- 

3Z 



322 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

fluence that drives him from fervour to frivol- 
ity. 

You will observe where Paul places frivolity; 
it is in the ^desires.' I do not suppose he was 
in the least afraid of Timothy's outward morals; 
I am quite sure he had no cause to be. But 
Paul did not think this a sufficient ground of 
safety. If he had been told of Timothy's ex- 
ternal purity, he would still have cried, * Flee 
youthful desires!' The frivolous man was to 
Paul the man who desired frivolous things. 
The fast man in moral life was he whose heart 
was crowded with images of vanity and with 
forms of sensual mould. The contact which 
Paul feared for Timothy was an inward contact. 
He dreaded no company for a man like the com- 
pany of his own unregenerate heart; there was 
his place of temptation, there was his scene of 
danger. The frivolities of life were in each 
man's soul, and to cherish these in the soul was 
already to yield to temptation. 

I will mention one other advice of Paul to 
Timothy — more directly pastoral than those pre- 
ceding, yet dictated like these by the apostle's 






TIMOTHY THE DISCIPLINED 323 

memory of the pupil's youth. He tells him 
to be a workman 'rightly dividing the word 
of truth. ' The great temptation of young min- 
isters is to view the word of truth in a single 
aspect. Paul says it ought to be 'divided' — 
given out in portions according to the needs of 
the recipient. The youthful pastor is apt to 
address perpetually one class. One such pastor 
has a philosophic cast; another is evangelical; 
a third is purely practical — so we often sum 
up the special qualities of the preacher. Paul 
would say that each of the three was in fault 
through not 'dividing' the word of truth. He 
would say that one man should combine them 
all. He will probably have in his congregation 
representatives of all. The philosopher will be 
there — studying the mysteries of being. The 
evangelical will be there — inquiring the way of 
salvation. The moralist will be there — seeking 
the path of duty. Paul would say, ' Divide the 
word of truth — speak to each in turn. ' To him 
the pastoral life is a sacrificial life in which a 
man ought to put himself in sympathy with 
the limits of his congregation — to conceive his 



324 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

subject, not as it appears to hiniy but as it 
must appear to different modes of mind. He 
must empty himself of his own predilections 
— must think with the thoughts of others. He 
must see deeply with the student, simply with 
the children, practically with the workers and toil- 
ers. He must give to each, not his own favour- 
ite portion, but the portion to which each is 
suited. He must not descant on Dives and Laz- 
arus at the bedside of an invalid, nor expound 
the case of the ten virgins to a penitent seek- 
ing rest. He must be appropriate — which lit- 
erally means, he must give to every one his own. 
TJiat is the right * dividing ' of the word of truth. 
Now, Paul may have observed in Timothy's 
youth a tendency to this one-sidedness. There 
was everything to favour its existence. The 
Greek blood within him made for it in one di- 
rection; the Jewish blood within him made for 
it in another. The spirit of youth itself fa- 
voured it. Youth is ever apt to be one-sided, 
and therefore inappropriate. Young people 
tend to say the thing unsuited to a particular 
occasion, and they do so simply because they 



TIMOTHY THE DISCIPLINED 325 

are one-sided. The cure for them, the cure for 
Timothy, the cure for all of us, is Christianity 
— the power to stand in the place of another. 
That is what makes the religion of Christ differ 
alike from the Gentile and the Jew; it can in- 
corporate itself in the sympathies of both. It 
can divide a portion of the soul between either 
combatant, and therefore can beat with the 
heart of each. The imitation of Christ is the 
imitation of one who emptied himself, who 
clothed himself in the likeness of others, who 
strove to live in the experience of those beneath 
him. Only in the effort to follow this life can 
man avoid the partialities of the Gentile and 
the Jew. 

There is one little point to which I should 
like to direct attention. Did you ever ask your- 
self why it is that before administering this 
discipline to Timothy Paul himself assumes such 
a humble attitude.^ Instead of opening with 
a tone of authority, he begins his letter by tell- 
ing Timothy what a miserable creature he him- 
self had been — a blasphemer, a persecutor, an 
injurer of men, a man who for his present posi- 



326 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

tion was entirely indebted to the mercy of God. 
.And can you fail to see why Paul begins by 
taking the lowest room? It was in accordance 
with his own sublime exhortation, * If a man be 
overtaken in a fault, restore such a one in the 
spirit of meekness. ' He means, in other words, 
'Do not address him from a lordly height; let 
him see that you too have tripped in your day. * 
That is what Paul wanted Timothy to see. He 
did not wish the pupil to look upon him as a 
demi-god. He knew that the basis of all teach- 
ing is sympathy, and that sympathy demands 
a common experience. He comes to Timothy, 
not in his latest robes, but in his original rags. 
He speaks to him, not from the top of the lad- 
der, but from its base. He pleads with him, 
not as one who was born to angelic purity and 
has never breathed the air of evil, but as one 
who has known corruption, who has felt tempta- 
tion, who has touched sin, who has learned the 
pain of struggle, and who even now is unable to 
ascribe his salvation to any merit of his own. 
The discipline from such a man has strength, 
but no sting. 



TIMOTHY THE DISCIPLINED 327 

LORD, when I go to discipline my brother- 
man, let me remember his environment! 
Let me remember Timothy's youth, and that 
the passions of youth are strong! Let me re- 
member his Greek blood that cries for novelty 
in every form — that flies to-day on the wings of 
fancy, to-morrow on the pinions of pleasure! 
Let me remember his Pagan influences, and 
how many voices in the Garden urge him to 
climb the tree! Let me remember, above all, 
my own youth, my own heredity, my own first 
surroundings ! When I visit my erring brother, 
let me put on my garment of yesterday! Let 
me not go to him wearing that best robe which 
Thou hast brought forth for me, and display- 
ing that bright ring^ which claims me as Thy 
child! Let me fold Thy fair garment and lay 
it by ; let me take off Thy bright ring and put 
it aside! Bring me the mean attire of my 
morning! Bring me the squalid garb in which 
first I met Thee ! Bring me the tattered rags 
in which of old I stood before Thy door! I 
will go to my brother, clothed in the likeness 
of sinful flesh. I will go to him with ringless 



328 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

hands, with shoeless feet, with prideless gait. 
I will go to him and say, ' I come to thee from 
thine own valley — from humiliation kindred to 
thine. I too have been among the swine. I 
too have been a child of the famine. I too 
have been content to feed on the husks for a 
time. By no merit of mine am I saved; whDe 
I was yet afar off my Father saw me. Receive 
thy hope from mcy thy comfort from me, thine 
example from me! Learn from my rags thy 
possible riches ! See in my meanness thy possi- 
ble majesty! Behold in my lowliness thy pos- 
sible ladder! Read in my corruption thy possi- 
ble crown! So, on the stepping-stones of my 
dead self, may'st thou rise to higher things.* 



I 



CHAPTER XVI 

PAUL THE ILLUMINATED 



In the chapters on Barnabas, Mark, and Tim- 
othy I have alluded to many of the outward 
incidents in the life of Paul. I do not intend 
to traverse these lines again. I do not intend 
to traverse any historical lines. And for this 
reason: The difference between Paul and the 
other figures of the Gallery is not an outward 
difference. If you look at him merely in the 
external acts of his life, you will find nothing 
that marks him out as a man of unique experi- 
ence. I do not know of any historical fact in 
Paul's experience which I am not prepared to 
parallel with the experience of those already 
considered. Did Paul reject Christ; so, for 
a moment, did Peter. Did Paul miraculously 
escape from prison; so also did Peter. Did 

Paul suffer shipwreck; so, to an equal extent, 
329 



330 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

did Peter. Did Paul turn a somersault; so did 
John. Did Paul write compositions of the most 
divers kinds ; so did John. Did Paul receive a 
vision of heavenly things; so did John. Was 
Paul suddenly convinced of the power of Jesus; 
so was Thomas. I could multiply parallels 
almost indefinitely to show that the outward 
life of the Gentile apostle is not essentially dis- 
tinct from the lives of his fellow-Christians. 
What distinguishes Paul is an experience from 
within — an illumination from the spirit, the ris- 
ing of an inner sun. It is the fact that this 
man after conversion did the same kind of work 
which he had been doing before, and that yet 
by an added light in his soul he found it to be 
wholly new. His work as Saul of Tarsus was 
the building of a temple ; his work as Paul the 
Apostle was the building of a temple too. Yet, 
what he felt was not uniformity but difference, 
contrast, revolution. Outwardly he was engaged 
in the old things ; but in the very act he was 
constrained to cry, * Old things are passed 
away. ' Whence came this paradox ? From what 
he himself calls a shining in the heart. The 



PAUL THE ILLUMINATED 331 

change was in the region of the spirit. Sun 
and moon and stars remained the same; moun- 
tain, river, and stream abode in their wonted 
place; but within his soul a new presence had 
arisen, and by its potency and power every ob- 
ject of his past was transformed and glorified. 

The crisis hour of Paul's life was his transi- 
tion from Judaism into Christianity. What 
was that transition.^ We are so familiar with 
the fact that we are apt to forget what it repre- 
sents. What is the spiritual difference between 
the Jew and the Christian.? It is easy to state 
the doctrinal difference; but that of the spirit 
lies deeper. Let me try to exhibit the con- 
trast in the form of a little parable. 

A certain father had two boys whom he was 
very desirous to bring up good. He thought 
this would best be accomplished by inuring 
them to a habit of life. Accordingly, he made 
a proposal to them. He promised to give each 
of them a penny for every hour of the day 
in which they should abstain from doing any 
bad action. As the sleeping hours were in- 
evitably included in such a bargain, it was real- 



332 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

iy an offer to each of two shillings a day for 
total abstinence from wicked deeds. The elder 
brother accepted the proposal with alacrity; 
the younger refused — he preferred his freedom. 
The elder brother got the name of being virtuous. 
He did not, indeed, uniformly make his two 
shillings, for there was always some hour of 
some day in which he transgressed; but out of 
each day he always gathered something. The 
younger, on the other hand, was deemed reck- 
less, careless, godless ; hardly an hour passed in 
which he had not his hand in something wrong. 
The one brother was called the man of God, 
the other the man of Satan. 

But in process of time a thing happened which 
made one section of the community change its 
mind. The brothers chanced one day to pass a 
picture in a shop window — it was that of a man 
walking through the scenes of a malignant pes- 
tilence in the sheer hope of alleviating human 
pain. The elder brother looked at the picture 
with indifference. The younger gazed, lifted 
up his hands and cried, * I believe in that man ; 
that is the man I should like to serve, should 



\ 



PAUL THE ILLUMINATED 333 

like to follow, should like to imitate.' And the 
bystander said : * It is this younger brother 
that deserves the prize. Incorrect as his life 
comparatively is, though there is not an hour 
in which he does not commit faults to which his 
brother is a stranger, he has yet reached in one 
thought, in one aspiration, in one admiring look, 
a height which through all the laborious days 
that brother has never climbed.' 

Now, the elder brother of this parable is the 
Jew ; the younger is the Christian. The former 
makes the attempt to count his deeds of absti- 
nence. The latter keeps no reckoning of his 
deeds; but in his room there hangs a picture 
of surpassing beauty — a picture he has bought 
and on which he gazes continually; it is the 
description of an act of love by which a Divine 
spirit gave his life for the world. The difference 
between the Jew and the Christian is the dif- 
ference between the tied hand and the winged 
mind. It is quite possible that the force of 
outward law may keep a man all his life from in- 
juring his neighbour; yet such a man will be 
no nearer to the beauties of holiness than had 



334 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

he been living in a state of open war. But 
suppose that, instead of t)'-ing his hands, you 
Hberated his heart, suppose that, instead of par- 
alysing him with fear, you quickened him with 
a sense of beauty, suppose that you confronted 
him, not with the penalties of doing harm, but 
with a picture of doing good, you would give him 
in a moment the door of access into a purity 
which all the years of his mere moral abstinence 
have failed to reveal to his sight. The picture 
on which he would look would be beyond his 
present strength; and he would know it to 
be so. But none the less it would be the true 
measure of the man, the prophecy of his com- 
ing self, the foreshadowing of that height which 
he is destined to win. 

Let us return for a moment to the parable 
of the two boys. I have indicated that the by- 
standers take different sides. Some go with 
the elder brother who keeps the laborious hours ; 
others adhere to the younger who gazes on the 
beautiful picture. Now, Paul at first sided with 
the former class. He thought that the promised 
sum ought to be given to the boy who made 



PAUL THE ILLUMINATED 335 

himself a drudge. He was very angry with 
the seductive picture which had seemed to open 
up a short and easy way. He was so angry that 
he could not keep away from it. He wanted to 
see where its power of seduction lay — to study 
it that he might refute it. So he went daily to 
look at the picture, and gazed on it with an ad- 
verse eye. But, as he looked, there happened a 
strange thing— the picture crept into his soul. 
He had sought to find the secret of its power 
with the view of refuting it. He did find the 
secret of its power; but it refuted him. The 
gaze of anger was transmuted into a gaze of 
rapture. He was conquered by the spectacle 
of moral purity. He saw a spotless soul walk- 
ing amid the dread pestilence of sin — treading 
the infected streets, touching the unclean gar- 
ments, breathing the deadly vapours, nursing 
the stricken patients, haunting the scenes of 
horror from which the world had fled, and at 
last sinking exhausted by the wayside and pur- 
chasing the life of others by the sacrifice of his 
own. All this Paul saw, and for the first time 
there woke within him a sense of what sin really 



336 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

was, what purity really was, what the service 
of God really was. In one instant he rose far 
above all the steps he had been climbing for 
years. By one thought, by one vision, by one 
sight of an ideal man, he reached a height which 
a thousand acts had failed to win. He said: 
*I believe in that man — ^he expresses all that 
I should like to be. Will not this be God's 
measure of me, God's estimate of me, the 
standard of judgment by which God will see 
my capacities for good! Will He not test me 
for the time to come, not by what I am, but 
by what I wish to be!' 

This was the moment of Paul's illumination. 
It was the moment in which there entered into 
his soul the one love of his life — the only pas- 
sion which ever stirred his heart. Christ has 
appealed to men in many ways — sometimes in 
fear, sometimes in reverence, sometimes in spec- 
ulation, sometimes in the sense of protection. 
To Paul He is exclusively an object of love. 
Every other phase of thought is absorbed in 
that one. He tells us so himself. In that mag- 
nificent hymn of his which will live as long as 



PAUL THE ILLUMINATED 337 

the Christian ages, he sings not only the ever- 
lastingness but the predominance of love. 
He sings how in his own experience all virtues 
have melted into love — how faith has faded 
into its certainty, how prophecy has died in its 
fulfilment, how knowledge has yielded to its 
light. The inward history of Paul is the history 
of his love — ^the history of that process by which 
love filled all things.* This, from an artistic 
point of view, is the real interest of the apos- 
tle's life. His missionary journeys interest the 
evangelist, his doctrinal system attracts the 
theologian; but what distinguishes him to 
the eye of the artist is that gradual process of 
illumination through which, step by step and 
sphere by sphere, every part of the universe 
was lit up, until the world became to him * the 
fulness of Him that filleth all in all.' 

I have spoken of Paul's illumination as a 
gradual process. I should like to explain what 
I mean by this. I do not think that after his 

* Love came to Paul as self-enlightenment, to John as 
self -surrender ; Paul never needed self-surrender— at no 
time did he live for himself. 

22 



338 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

conversion Paul ever changed his mind on a mat- 
ter of doctrine — his faith in Christ was as strong 
at the beginning as it was at the end. Nor 
do I think that Paul's actual love for Christ 
went through any modification; it began per- 
haps unconsciously, and was revealed to himself 
suddenly, but from that time I think it never 
varied. When I speak, however, of a gradual 
process in Paul, I mean, not an enlargement 
of his love, but an enlargement of its sphere. 
These two things are quite distinct. A child's 
love for his father may be perfect without being 
perfectly illuminating. It may be an isolated 
and isolating love — may keep him from seeing 
the beauty and acknowledging the real attrac- 
tions of the other persons around him. Illu- 
mination is not the heating but the lighting 
process. Paul's love to Christ was as perfect 
when he wrote to the Thessalonians as when he 
penned his letters to Timothy; but it was less 
far-seeing, or, to speak more accurately, it shed 
less light upon surrounding things. The tri- 
umph of love is not the amount of its passion ; it 
is the number of things which it irradiates. The 



PAUL THE ILLUMINATED 339 

development of Paul is not a deepening of con- 
viction, not a progress in doctrine, not an inten- 
sifying of emotion, not a growth in the spirit 
of sacrifice; it is an enlargement of the sphere 
of love. He says himself that his Christ was 
destined to fill all things within his universe. 
And so He was; but the process was not an 
instantaneous one. Paul did not at once see 
all things subject to Him. At first his Christ 
seemed to dwell apart from the world and to 
be sharply divided from the world. Step by 
step the barriers were broken down, and, as each 
barrier fell, the light ran over. Field was added 
to field where the Divine Presence could walk in 
the cool of the day, till, in the fulness of Paul's 
experience, the world on every side was * bound 
by gold chains about the feet of God. ' 

What is the common process of love's en- 
largement.? Take a human love; take what 
we generally term romantic love. What are 
the stages through which it is wont to pass.'* I 
think there are four. At first it is a hope — 
something to be realised to-morrow. Then it 
is a present possession, but reserved as yet 



340 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

only for garden hours when we are free from the 
bustle of the crowd. By and by its range is 
widened — it becomes a stimulus for the great 
duties of life; it comes out from the garden 
into the city; it nerves to do and to bear. At 
last it reaches its climax — it comes down to 
trifles. It glorifies the commonplace; it finds 
sermons in stones and sonnets in the dust. Lit- 
tle things are magnified; unromantic things 
are glorified. We do prosaic work. We per- 
form menial duties. We go through cheerful 
drudgery. We pluck thorns instead of flowers, 
and smile at the pain. The latest stage of 
love's enlargement is when it touches the 
things on the ground. 

And this is the order in the enlargement of 
Paul's love. How do we know this? Because 
we have in our possession a copy of his love- 
letters. They form a series stretching over 
some fifteen or sixteen years. If we cannot 
always point to their exact date, we can tell 
at least the order in which they come. And 
as we study them in this light we make a dis- 
covery. We find that the series is a series of 



PAUL THE ILLUMINATED 341 

milestones. The letters of Paul are a pro- 
gressive history. They describe the onward 
march of his love — ^and none the less effective- 
ly because they do it unconsciously. You may 
not trace landmarks in his theology. As you 
travel from the Thessalonians to the Corinthians, 
from the Corinthians to the Ephesians, from 
the Ephesians to the Pastorals, you may not be 
able to point to a spot in which a new doc- 
trine has taken the place of the old. But there 
is one thing you can see — the bird is flying over 
a larger field. The bird is love. Its wings have 
not increased in strength, its plumage is not 
more beautiful, its flight is not more high ; but 
its range is wider over the earthly plain. The 
history of love's enlargement in Paul is identical 
with the history of its enlargement in you. He 
reaches the goal of freedom by the same road. 
There are no two kinds of love where love is 
pure. Paul's devotion to his Christ was not 
different in essence from your devotion to an 
earthly friend; and the enlargement of his de- 
votion to his Christ followed the same steps 
which enlarge the compass of your human devo- 



342 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

tion. Christ is to him first the object who is 
coming, then the object that is already in the 
soul, then the object that gives strength for 
the world, and lastly the object which has glori- 
fied the things once deemed insignificant and 
trivial. Let us glance at each of these. 

When Paul's love for Christ first rose, it rose 
as a hope. Like romantic love, it presented it- 
self as the prospect of to-morrow. Christ was 
coming — He would change all things, would 
beautify all things. This present system did 
not represent Him; but this present system was 
ready to vanish away. * It is not here, ' he cries 
to the Thessalonians, * that you can expect to 
see Christ's glory; His glory can only ap- 
pear in the transformation of the world. He 
is coming to transform, to purify, to brighten. 
It is true, some of you are expecting Him too 
soon. The world has not yet thoroughly re- 
vealed its badness; it is kept in check by the 
laws of the Roman empire. But the time is 
coming when that empire shall be crushed and 
broken ; then the passions of men shall be loosed 
and you will learn your need of God's morning. 



PAUL THE ILLUMINATED 343 

Your hope is in the future; your sun is in to- 
morrow's sky; your dawn is in the coming 
day.' 

Remember, the Christ whom Paul first saw 
was the Christ in heaven. He never gazed 
upon the man of Galilee. His earliest vision 
was the vision of a Jesus glorified. Not on the 
road to the cross did Christ meet him; He 
came to him panoplied in heavenly splendour. 
What his inner eye beheld was the Christ of 
the future — a Christ of majesty, a Christ of 
power, a Christ who came clothed in the light- 
ning and wreathed in the conqueror's robe. 
That was the first Christian image in Paul's 
soul. Is it wonderful that it should have been 
the first Christian image in his writings! Is 
it wonderful that his earliest note of missionary 
music should be * Jesus and the Resurrection ' ! 
Is it wonderful that at first his love should look 
forward instead of either back or around — 
should begin, neither with memory nor with 
fruition, but with an act of hope! The being 
whom he loved had come to him as a prospect, 
not as a possession. He had flashed before 



344 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

him as an object to strive for, as a prize which 
to-morrow was to win; and therefore within 
the folds of to-morrow lay all his salvation 
and all his desire. 

But a second stage was coming ; you will find 
it in the transition from Athens to Corinth. 
Up to the time when he reached the summit of 
Mars Hill he had preached Christ and the Res- 
urrection — the Christ behind the veil. B ut af- 
ter his descent from Mars Hill his love found 
a new sphere. He began to think, not of the 
Christ in the heavens, but of the Christ in 
the soul. There broke upon him the convic- 
tion that even in this world there might be a 
little green spot where he could meet with Je- 
sus. There was a garden plot on earth which 
was not of earth — the region of the human 
spirit. Thither he might retire betimes and be 
at peace. Within the scene of turmoil there 
might be a moment of supreme joy, a place 
of placid rest, a bower in whose sweet retire- 
ment the burden and the heat might be for- 
gotten and where the soul could revel in com- 
munion with the object of its love. 



PAUL THE ILLUMINATED 345 

Here, then, Paul's love has reached a higher 
stage of illumination; it has found a place 
within the present world. But the world itself 
to the eye of Paul has not yet been illuminated 
— it only contains a spot where illumination is 
possible. That spot is thoroughly fenced in; 
the common round of life enters not within 
its precincts. What is Paul's attitude towards 
the world at this time.? It has been described 
as an adverse one. I would define it rather as 
one of indifference. He is in that stage of 
love in which everything is ignored but the gar- 
den — the place of meeting with its object. His 
language towards the outside is not that of en- 
mity but simply of uninterestedness. He does 
not condemn marriage; he says it is a matter 
of no consequence whether one is married or 
single. He does not condemn merchandise; 
he says that buying and selling are things of 
no religious moment. He does not condemn 
the use of life's good things; he says that he 
has entered into a joy which to him personally 
would make the using of them or the refraining 
from them a question of absolute unimportance 



346 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

— ^these things have lost their glory by reason 
of an all-excelling glory. A young woman of 
my acquaintance asked a revival preacher if he 
thought there was any harm in dancing; the 
answer was, * I do not see how you can find 
time.' I think that at this period such would 
have been Paul's reply to any one asking whether 
in the light of Christ he was entitled to take 
part in worldly pleasures; he would have said, 
*The time is short.' To his mind it was not 
so much that Christ opposed anything as that 
He dwarfed everything. He eclipsed to Paul 
even the glories of nature. Men have wondered 
at his silence on physical beauty; some have 
explained it by the theory that the thorn in his 
flesh was blindness. It may have been. But, 
to account for Paul's silence about physical 
beauty, we need no thorn. It came from his 
flower. There was a presence in the air which 
to him put out sun and moon and star. It 
struck him blind, not by darkness, but by light. 
It dimmed the skies by its glor}^ It withered 
the flowers by its radiance. It lowered the 
mountains by its majesty. It supplanted eye 



PAUL THE ILLUMINATED 347 

and ear, and reigned in their stead. The world's 
beauty to Paul was crucified in Jesus. 

I come to the third stage in the illumination 
of Paul's love. Its birthplace was Caesarea and 
within the walls of a prison.^ Strange that 
a prison should have been the scene of Paul's 
enlargement! Yet, paradoxical as it seems, it 
was in prison that the world expanded to his 
view. Here, for the first time, he saw Chris- 
tianity through a telescope; and things which 
he had deemed so far off as to be outside the 
pale of Christ were brought so nigh as to be 
recognised as parts of His kingdom. Christ 
had already been recognised by Paul as the 
head of the Church; but in that prison at 
Caesarea He became more — the nead of the 
state, the head of all states. Within the walls 
of that prison the Christian world burst the 
boundaries Paul had assigned to it. The sec- 
ular became sacred in its greater manifestations 
— its appearance through the telescope. Hith- 

* I have here followed the view of Meyer that the Epis- 
tles to the Ephesians and the Colossians belong to the 
Caesarean rather than to the Roman Captivity — though, 
unlike him, I assign to Rome Philippians and Philemon. 



348 THE REPRESENTATIVE IVIEN 

erto in the apostle's mind the kingdom of 
Christ had been limited to the sitters at the 
communion-table. But here, as if by an open- 
ing in the heavens, there was revealed a wider 
empire of the Son of Man. He was no longer 
merely the king of saints; He was the king of 
kings — the head of principahties and powers. 
The Church was no more a Uttle garden walled 
in from the outside world; the outside world 
was itself the vestibule into the Church. All 
kingdoms were Christ's kingdom; all history 
was Church-histor>s all events among the na- 
tions were events in the sphere of reUgion. 
Paul began to see his Christ outside the limits 
of Eden and apart from the trees of the Gar- 
den. He had traced His hand in the breaking 
of communion bread; he began to trace it in 
the powers called natural — in the field of pol- 
itics, in the field of wrt, in the field of litera- 
ture, in the field of human eloquence. There 
dawned upon him the conviction that salvation 
might enter the soul by a secular door. If 
Christ was the head of the state, if the state 
as well as the Church was His embodiment. 



I 



PAUL THE ILLUMINATED 349 



I 



then, in the service of the state, a man might 
well feel that he was performing mission labour. 
The politician in the very pursuit of his pol- 
itics, the senator in the very exercise of his art, 
the soldier in the very act of defending his 
country, might claim to be evangelists. In 
the light of such a thought as that, Paul might 
well realise that his own profession was taken 
by violence, and that the secular heroes of every 
age could claim him as a brother. 

Such was the illumination of PauFs love in 
the sphere of the telescope. But what of its 
illumination in the sphere of the microscope. 
He had seen the sacredness of the state with 
its mighty principalities and powers. But there 
was an opposite to the state and its principal- 
ities — the home and its commonplaces. This is 
the last stage in the progress of romantic love. 
It reaches every spot before that. It begins with 
the future; then it finds in the present a se- 
cret place where the world cannot come; then 
it wreathes itself round the great things of the 
world. All these Paul had passed through. 
But the final stage remained — love's illumination 



350 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

of those things of the world which were not 
great — the gilding of the commonplaces of home. 
That also was coming. Already in the latest 
sections of what I consider the Csesarean Epis- 
tles we find traces of the idealising of home; 
yet it does not there get the first place. It is 
in Paul's last missionary journey that there 
strikes the final hour of his spiritual pilgrim- 
age. There, in his epistle to Titus, his love 
reaches its final glory by reaching the ground. 
There, for the first time, the subject from be- 
ginning to end is the secular home-life of the 
Christian congregation. To the eye of youth- 
ful romance it is a most wingless letter. There 
are no flights in the air, no speculations about 
futurity, no expositions of Christian doctrine. 
Their place is taken by home precepts — pre- 
cepts for the hearth, precepts for the household, 
precepts for the unity of the family bond. Each 
generation is addressed in turn — the grand- 
father and grandmother, the son and daughter, 
the children of the son and the children of the 
daughter; while even their relation to the do- 
mestic servants is not forgotten. Yet, wingless 



PAUL THE ILLUMINATED 351 

as the letter seems, it is really a proof that love's 
wings are perfected. In the illumination of 
home's prosaic duties the spirit of romance has 
reached its utmost stretch of pinion. Its cli- 
max is not the mount but the vale; its glory is 
not the diamond but the dust. When Paul's 
love had illuminated the commonplaces of home, 
it might well break into the cry, * I have fought 
a good fight, I have finished my course ; hence- 
forth there is laid up for me a crown of glory. ' 

LORD, illuminate this world to me! Often 
have I asked Thine illumination of the 
spheres beyond; it seemed a harder thing to 
light up heaven than to light up earth. But I 
have found that I was wrong. It is for humble 
things I most need Thy revealing. It is easy 
for me to worship in the solemn hour of night 
when the pulse of life is silent and the world's 
tread beats low. It is easy for me to worship 
when the sacred symbols are in my hand and 
the sacred memories are in my soul. But the 
clouds and darkness that are round about Thee 
lie not in heaven's mysteries; they lie in earth's 



352 THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN 

shallows. It is bewildering to see Cana anxious 
only about a deficiency in the feast when the 
real problem is one of life and death ; it makes 
me say, ' Religion is unreal. ' Yet Thou hast 
stooped to the shallows of Cana, Thou hast 
thrown Thyself into sympathy with the wants 
of children. I can find Thee, I can find Thy 
cross, even in the land of trifles. Help me, 
when there, to seek that cross ! Help me to 
repeat Thy sympathy with Cana! Help me to 
wade in the shallows with the child! Help me 
to remember needs that I have surmounted, to 
respect desires that I have outgrown! Help 
me to go down to the things I used to wish 
for — to recall the claims of yesterday! Then 
shall I be fervent even amid frivolities, true 
even amid trifles, Christian even amid crudities. 
Then shall I find pearls in the pool, gold in the 
grass, sapphires in the snow, treasures in the 
trodden way. Then shall Thy cross be planted 
in its most unlikely soil — the place of worldly 
pleasure, the ground which the trivial tread. 
Love will have lighted her final torch when she 
has illuminated the wants of Cana. 



6 

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